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PHILADELPHIA (ChurchMilitant.com) - Once a thriving house of God, the shuttered "Cathedral of Kensington" is now a rotting heroin den.

(Photo: David Maialetti, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

A July 7 report in The Philadelphia Inquirer offers a stark portrait of Ascension of Our Lord Church, once one of the glories of Catholic Philadelphia, whose doors closed in 2012.

The building has the feel of an abandoned field hospital. Blankets and cardboard mattresses line the floors, the chapels, and the sacristy where priests used to robe. Needles litter the altars – and stick from the holy water font like crosses in a graveyard. Bloodied rags fill pews. Human excrement and condoms mar the confessionals.

Haunted souls, lost in addiction, wander the aisles and slouch in the pews. On the wall of a devotional chapel, one of them has painted a cry to God: "Forgive me, father, for my sins."

The cornerstone of Ascension parish was laid in 1914, and on completion, it accommodated 1,300 worshippers at a time. The brilliance of its stained glass and the quality of its statuary drew comparisons to those of churches in Europe. It was the pride of Kensington's working class faithful.

But during the 1960s, things changed. The parish began to decline, the school began emptying and the church began hollowing out.

(Photo: David Maialetti, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

In 1963, some 1,800 students attended Ascension of Our Lord School. Fewer than 200 were enrolled by the time the school closed in 2010.

Between 2008 and 2012, average weekly Mass attendance fell by half, to 188. In its last year, a mere two weddings and seven baptisms were performed.

At the recommendation of Philadelphia's Archdiocesan Strategic Planning Committee, the "Cathedral of Kensington" was shut down. Though in some ways a stand-out, owing to the depths of the church's degradation, the story of Ascension of Our Lord Church is not unique.

Its closing was part of a larger restructuring campaign begun in fall 2010 when the archdiocese issued a pastoral letter to parishioners outlining the need for an in-depth review of all 257 parishes in order to determine whether or not they possessed "the necessary resources to remain vibrant and sustainable faith communities."

(Photo: David Maialetti, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Since 2012, the archdiocese of Philadelphia has deconsecrated approximately two dozen Catholic churches and merged dozens of parishes together. Among reasons cited were declining Mass attendance, increasing debt and a priest shortage. The same theme runs across many other American parishes.

In this year alone, the archdiocese of Hartford announced it is closing 26 churches and merging 144, and the archdiocese of New York decreed 18 churches to profane use.

The archdiocese of Chicago is forecasting it may be forced to shutter 100 churches by 2030.

The archdiocese of Detroit has closed or merged over 50 churches over the past five years.

In 2012, the archdiocese of Milwaukee announced that half of its parishes would be consolidated or dissolved entirely by decade's end.

The diocese of Cleveland shut down more than three dozen church over a 15-month period, beginning in 2009.

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