MEXICO CITY — The Our Lady of Angels Church has survived several major earthquakes, but Sept. 19's magnitude 7.1 shake appears to have been the death knell for the Mexico City building's historic cupola.

Violent cracks crisscross the dome, and stone from the roof continues to fall onto the church's wooden pews. Engineers believe the cupola probably will collapse at some point.

“Each earthquake has left its mark,” said Marco Antonio Fuentes, part of the church's ministry. “This one seems to be the straw that will break the camel's back.”

The Archdiocese of Mexico says more than 150 religious temples in this deeply Roman Catholic country were damaged by the deadly quake.

Many of the battered buildings are in the state of Puebla, where the epicenter was located. There in the city of Atzala, a child's baptism turned into tragedy when the roof of a church collapsed, killing 11 family members inside, including the 2-month-old girl being christened.

Statues of saints have been left maimed, missing hands and feet. Once towering, celestial church naves are now open to the sky. Dust from fallen stone and concrete cover altars.

On the first Sunday since the earthquake, priests no longer able to say Mass inside collapsing churches instead held services outside paying homage to victims and survivors.

“Our religion is more than a building,” Colin Noguez, the priest at Our Lady of Angels, told parishioners inside a tent with a table holding a cross and candles from the building.

Many of the collapsed buildings where rescuers have been searching for survivors held offices and apartments, places where people worked and lived. The damage to churches hit a different chord — striking places that in many Mexican cities serve as pillars of strength in times of distress.

“It's our mother,” Azalia Ramirez, 60, said of Our Lady of Angels, which sits in a working-class neighborhood. “We come here looking for Communion, peace and tranquility.”

Our Lady of Angels is believed to be the most heavily damaged church in Mexico City, while the severity of destruction to religious structures is largely concentrated in Puebla.

In Atzala, a town of 1,200 people, little remains of the golden yellow church with a red roof where the 11 people died. The interior where pews once stood is a mess of twisted metal and fallen stone leading to an altar where the word “merciful” now hangs at a slant.

“Everything happened in the blink of an eye,” said Sergio Montiel, the church's sexton.

As the church shifted to recovery mode, a planned wedding instead took place outside under a beige tent with mariachi players standing nearby.

In San Francisco Xochiteopan, another town farther south, clergy members moved broken saints into a gym where a makeshift Mass was celebrated.

“If God left us here, it's for a reason,” said Juana Villanueva, who lost six relatives in the Atzala collapse.

At Mass in Puebla and elsewhere, priests urged parishioners to use this painful moment as a moment of reflection.