BUFFALO, N.Y. — The pigeon shit is everywhere. It’s in the belly of the church, beneath the cracked cathedral ceiling, carpeting the floor of the nave where wooden pews once stood. It’s in the choir loft. On a narrow flight of steps ascending skyward to the bell tower, the droppings have accumulated in a lining […]
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St. Matthew’s History: Q & A With the Buffalo Diocese
BUFFALO, N.Y. — St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1908, is one of 14 churches the eight-county Catholic Diocese of Buffalo closed in the 1990s. Like business, factories and other landmarks across the city, the house of worship fell victim to the region’s declining population.
Continue readingTrue Bethel Baptist Church: The Neighborhood Is Bleak. The Church Is Not
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The billboard at the northwest corner of Fillmore Avenue and East Ferry Street was the kind of urban gem that inspired drivers to brake for a better look or backtrack to snap a picture. A mammoth photograph of a man in a leopard-print toga filled out the center of the sign. Eyebrows… Continue reading
By Faith or Fortune: How a Lost Boy’s Journey to Buffalo Led Back to Sudan
BUFFALO, N.Y. — On the road to Koiyom in Southern Sudan, they must have seemed an unlikely pair — this gray-haired Catholic priest from Western New York and the 31-year-old Sudanese man he calls his son. But there they were, traveling together — Father Ronald Sajdak, the gregarious pastor of an East Side church, a… Continue reading