The Catholic pilgrimage church and the related cloisters arose in the small and primarily Protestant hamlet of Neviges. In Gottfried Böhm’s oeuvre there are many sculptural and cleft-looking concrete churches. Neviges is the largest, and is the second biggest religious building in the Cologne Bishopric after the cathedral. In the competition, the design was selected at the personal intervention of the bishop. What swung the scales was the concrete topography leading to the church and (ostensibly) the fact that the model allowed the almost blind bishop to trace the outline of the roof with his fingers.

A heritage building since 1995, roof leaks, damp is rising in the church, corroded reinforcing steel, cracks; Wüstenrot Stiftung has been renovating the building since 2014 under the lead of Gottfried Böhm’s son Peter Böhm; prior to that repeated bouts of repairs.