"We essentially went to half of what we used to back in the early 2000s," he told ABC News. "We lost about 100 parishes."

Zielenieski expects he'll need to shut down another 70 churches in what the Diocese is calling its "road to renewal." It's a very biblical name for the challenge facing churches: People just aren't going as much as they used to.

On average, more than half of the diocese's churches today are baptizing fewer than one person a month, and 59% of them are spending more than they take in, Zielenieski noted.



In the late 1940s, nearly 80% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple, according to Gallup. Today, just 45% say the same, the analytics company noted, and only 32% say that they worship God in a house of prayer once a week.

Another Gallup poll found that child sex abuse cases may be among the reasons for some people's absence from church.

In 2019, 37% percent of U.S. Catholics, up from 22% in 2002, said that news of abuse cases led them to question whether they would remain in the Catholic church.

In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, America was losing as many as 1,000 churches a year.

Some former churches are being converted for businesses or residential use. One old Methodist church in Atlanta, which was down to about 60 members when it closed, was sold to a luxury real estate developer seven years ago. Now, it's become a series of 3,000-square-foot condos.

Some of the oldest churches in the world have even turned into bars and nightclubs.