An abandoned and decaying church is being rebuilt

Back in Pittsburgh, I wrote a piece on St. Canice, an abandoned Irish Roman Catholic church. All of the summer interns at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette decided to combine our efforts and spotlight these abandoned altars, these silent sanctuaries that have been closed for decades. The church I researched and finally found my way into is currently being remodeled and refurbished. It will be transformed into a nondenominational Christian church. With some door-to-door poking around, I found the current owners and had them take me into a church infested with pigeon poop and rotting wood. What's even better was the tour with two sisters who grew up in that Irish-immigrant community, and hadn't been inside the church in decades. What began as a sad, nostalgic story turned into one of the most valuable experiences I had that summer.

There are so many immigrant communities in Pittsburgh that were separated and dispersed into wider areas after the collapse of the steel industry. Their lives revolved around their church.

Aside from the photos and the story that was published along with the other churches in the project, I took my own photos of that day on a bad cell phone camera.

Gustavo Jimenez, the new pastor of the congregation, believes the old building has a lot of potential and is bringing the deteriorating church back to life. He lets the sisters in for the first time since they left the neighborhood soon after they were married.

The sisters, Cathleen Walters and Colleen Miller, are determined to poke around and claim some old bricks from the attic.

Decades of pigeon poop...

The attic with a eerie wooden cross propped against the window, moldy from water damage and pigeon waste.