Matt Lamb Church Bergern

Two thousand years after the birth of Christ, the small Bergen church was threatened by decay. But a fortunate confluence of initiatives and commitments by Bergen’s citizens, as well as the wise cooperation of decision-makers, has resulted in the site now shining in new splendour. The Irish-American painter and peace activist Matt Lamb – President of the Mitwest Partons of the Art of the Vatican Museums and Director of the Vatican Museum Fondation in New York – had previously painted churches in the Vatican, Chicago, Westminster, Barcelona, Petersburg and Tünsdorf (Saarland). Now the 75-year-old expressed the wish to be able to decorate one last place of worship.

The intensity of the colourful painting surprises and impresses, stimulates conversation and makes one fall silent. It symbolically depicts the Christian history of salvation in all its magnificence, the “work of God and Jesus Christ from God’s commission to Jesus to save the world to the redemption of the world” (Matt Lamb on his work). The result is a place of worship that is unique for Thuringia, for all of Germany.