Posted on 07/08/2017 8:03:41 PM PDT by marshmallow
The gas company supervisor showed up at Mother of Mercy, a storefront church on Allegheny Avenue, in late June. He’d just been inside the long-shuttered Ascension of Our Lord, a hulking cathedral of a building at F and Westmoreland. After what he’d seen, he needed to speak with a priest.
He’d been working in the neighborhood, the PGW man said, and slipped through a broken stained-glass window to take some photos for his wife, who had grown up in the parish. That’s when he saw the mess of needles carpeting the floor and pews — and the figures moving in the darkness.
“There were so many people in there it looked like they were waiting for Mass to start,” the man reported.
It made sense to Father William Murphy. For months, he and Father Joseph Devlin and Sister Ann Raymond had been feeding the young people who got high on the lawn of McPherson Square library. But then the police drove the crowds away. The addicted people had to have gone somewhere, he thought.
So Father Murphy and Sister Raymond walked the few blocks to the church that long was the jewel of the neighborhood, until it wasn’t. They stepped through a window, glass crunching underneath their feet.
In the half-light, they could make out thin forms. Some shot heroin in the pews, some laid half-naked on mattresses. Others stumbled past in their stupor, not noticing the priest and nun in their presence.
Father Murphy did all he could think to do. He began to bless them.
*
For nearly a century Ascension, with its towering columns and bell tower and interior that brought to mind the churches of Europe, was proudly nicknamed by parishioners the Cathedral of Kensington. It was deconsecrated in 2012 and sold two years later.
Now.....
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Hell on Earth. In a former church at that.
The walking dead.......
Bfl
Sanctuary city fool.
Kenny and the church are sharing the ride to the darker side of damnation and the cartels purchased the tickets on the sugar land express for them.
They better get right before Judgment day.
How can we get more people back into the church? This church should be a thriving beacon of hope but it takes people and money to make that happen.
JoMa
Kensington has always been a shithole.
It does remind me of the church scene in the first few minutes of the first episode of “Fear The Walking Dead”.
Former church...turned shooting gallery...current buffet line for the Walking Dead.
I went to school at Ascension of Our Lord, I made my first Holy Communion in this church. It was a beautiful place.
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