In Pittsburgh, Many Sentiments About Popes Health Reflect Concern, Not Closeness

Congregants escaping the winter morning’s chill trickled into Immaculate Heart of Mary Church for Sunday Mass last weekend.There was a time when the massive brick church, which stands like a beacon atop Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood, would have been packed with parishioners who lived in the surrounding blocks.Mark Dobies and his wife, Kim, remember those days.

Their grandfathers were among the Polish immigrants who built the church, whose interior is bathed in an ethereal light by the stained-glass windows.The couple, who live two blocks away, were married under the church’s dome, as were their parents.“I’ve watched it evolve,” Mr.

Dobies said after Sunday’s service, which resembled a pandemic Mass with far more pews empty than occupied.“People migrated out of the city.”This arc of a storied church in what was once a deeply Catholic city has in many ways mirrored what has taken place around the country, as ethnic congregations in working-class neighborhoods shriveled when manufacturing jobs disappeared.

The church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal only exacerbated the decline.Now, that distancing from the church might be seen here in another way: the relative ambivalence toward Pope Francis, whose health is increasingly frail.There might be an occasional candle lit in Pittsburgh for Francis, the 88-year-old pontiff, but there are no massive public vigils or signs of a community on edge.“I’m praying, but I don’t know a lot about him,” Carol Novak said after a Monday morning Mass at St.

Anthony Chapel, a quaint church in the Troy Hill neighborhood that boasts of housing more relics than anywhere outside of Rome.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Alread...