Feature: Meet a Jesuit art expert-pastor

If you are under the illusion that nobody in Germany attends mass anymore, travel to Cologne and marvel. Marvel at the huge crowd in St. Peter's Catholic church, which is filled with a thousand or more worshipers on any regular Sunday. Marvel at the organ emitting percussion, saxophone and xylophone sounds. Marvel at the curious 12-tone hymnals. Marvel at the works of contemporary Japanese painter Morio Nishimura on the otherwise-stark walls in the church's nave.

And then let your eyes rest on the beauty of the seemingly transfigured image of St. Peter crucified upside down. This masterpiece behind the altar is by Peter Paul Rubens, who was born in the Westphalian town of Siegen, not too far from here, and baptized in this very church in 1585.

And what kind of a homily may one expect in this kind of a place? No, nothing modernistic, but a theologically rock-solid sermon by a brilliant Jesuit, who cheerfully quotes Luther and Calvin, not only because this sits well with the many Protestants in his congregation, but also because he is an avowed ecumenist.

Meet the Rev. Friedhelm Mennekes, 62, mediator between the church and modern art, professor of practical theology and preaching -- and an internationally coveted lecturer on his favorite topic -- painting, sculpture and music.

It's not really sacred art that he promotes all over the world but especially in this late-Gothic sanctuary of which only fragments had survived the allied bombing of Cologne in World War II.

St. Peter's was restored only two years ago to a magnificent wide-open worship space without pews, like in pre-Reformation days. The faithful sit on chairs but those are removed when mass is over so as not to detract from the modern masterpieces exhibited on its walls.

In the "Kunststation St. Peter," in this "art station," Mennekes celebrates secular creativity, which he places nonetheless in the context of Luther's wrenching question that prompted the Reformation: "How do I find a gracious God?"

The Jesuit, whose order was created in the 16th century, uses Lutheran terminology when defining the artist as "God's co-creator." To Mennekes, the outwardly secular artist's oeuvre is "a means of evangelization. It makes me more awake. It forms me. It breaks open my faith and radicalizes it."

"Almost every artist I ever met was religious," Mennekes says in an interview. Joseph Rauschenberg, the American painter, stated unequivocally that all art was religion. "Europeans don't quite see it that way," Mennekes allows.

"Artists are almost naively religious," he says, the only exception among his circle of artistic friends being Francis Bacon, whose work was also exhibited in St. Peter's.

Bacon once told Mennekes, though, "Actually among the people around me I love those who believe the most. They know what is essential in life -- devotion. But I can't follow their way of life. The price would be too high. It would cost me my illusion."

Even more remarkable was a confession of sorts by the scandalously radical Charles Ray, some of whose painted figures have penises hanging out of their ears.

"I met him in Los Angeles," he says, "Ray said to me, 'What you are a priest, a real priest who says Mass? Oh, I have left the church when I was 12. But now that I am getting older, these (faith) questions are becoming more and more important to me. How wonderful that you have come to see me!"

Mennekes, a publican's son from the industrial Ruhr district, loves it when "artists use me not as an art freak but as a priest."

This fits his self-image not as a "fan," but a pastor. "That's all I ever wanted to be -- a parish priest," he says, even though he holds a Ph.D. in political science and an advanced doctorate ("habilitation") he earned with a dissertation on the Book of Deuteronomy.

Teaching assignments at some of the world's finest leading art schools -- Bloomington, Ind., Savannah, Ga., Columbia University, UCLA -- have not changed Mennekes' basic sense of calling to the congregation.

It was, in fact, as pastor to a working-class parish in Frankfurt that he discovered his love of art when commissioning a poster advertising a play one of his five youth groups was about to perform.

And more than 20 years on, he is still the consummate pastor, despite his fame as one of the Catholic Church's most important art experts and a top theologian.

His greatest success he sees in his ministry to the young. Imagine 200-300 kids attending the children's mass on any given Sunday in St. Martin's, a small, Romanesque downtown church reserved exclusively for them and decorated with their own drawings and paintings.

Cologne, which owes its name to the fact that it used to be a Roman colony, is celebrated as one of the leading art centers of Europe. But perhaps the most marvelous part of Cologne is this little old church where one of the great minds of Catholicism and hundreds of its youngest faithful are busy creating something spectacular -- a Bible for children by children.