Convert them into affordable housing.

Whatever the owner of the building wants to do with it.

Didn’t Russia use theirs for grain storage Community health clinics would be nice..

I did not read this article [yet]. However, when i was 18, i tromped through a church with a realtor and did not purchase it. Fifteen years later it was auctioned, gutted and rehabbed into a $2M home. - i wanted to turn it into a coffee house / performance space with living quarters. Regret.

Quebec has ejected the RCC from its institutional structures and we were delighted to find a medium-sized church in Quebec City had been converted into a public library, with the stacks in the floor space once occupied by pews. If I lived in that neighborhood I would love browsing for books in that capacious environment and soaring architecture, which was rather cathedral-like.

I read the other day of a Catholic nunnery in that same city that still has a handful of elderly retired nuns living in it, has been converted into a sort of meditation and health retreat / bed and breakfast. You eat breakfast in silence, like the nuns do (apparently they all took vows of silence of some variety or other). It's just basically trading in the atmosphere, and offering some classes / activities related to mindfulness, while helping pay for the upkeep until the last of the nuns die. After that, who knows.

All the locals uniformly told us that the Catholic churches in the province uphold a cultural tradition for those who like it, but no one seriously subscribes to the religious aspect anymore. This, to me, is a preview of how organized religion will fade out from society over time. It's already begun, even here in the US. It will take many generations to fully complete.