Franciscan Friary Kempen

Friars from the monastery in Dorsten, Westphalia, founded in 1488, came to the Lower Rhine to provide pastoral care. The founding was triggered in 1624 by the bequest of locksmith Nikolaus Halver, who left his house on Peterstraße to the Venlo Franciscan friary. Since the Venlo brothers found the building too small, they declined the inheritance. The episcopal commissioner and Halver's confessor, Johann Wilmius, together with Father Edmundus Sylvius, then made contact with the Franciscan friary in Düren. Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne, seeking to strengthen the Counter-Reformation, approved the founding on 31 May 1624 and appointed Father Henricus Laurentius as first superior. Until a proper church was built, the Holy Spirit Chapel on Buttermarkt served as a place of worship.

The monastery church, known as the Paterskirche, is a single-nave hall church with an elongated choir and cross vaults. The foundation stone was laid on 20 May 1630, and construction—carried out as the third building phase—was delayed by wartime material shortages. Prince-Bishop Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg consecrated the church on 29 August 1640, and it was remodeled in the Baroque style in 1748. Its furnishings include a high altar with a figure of the Virgin Mary and a sculpture of St. Katharina, both from the workshop of the Flemish Quellinus family. In 1804 the building was reconsecrated as the Catholic rectory church of St. Katharina.

During the redesign of the inner courtyard in 1987, a brick-built, barrel-vaulted chamber measuring 4.5 by 3.0 meters was discovered; its function—whether a cistern or drainage shaft—remains unclear, though it is dated to the 1746/48 rebuilding. The finds are now held at the Kramer Museum and the Rhenish State Museum in Bonn. The monastery grounds are a protected ground monument; any excavation requires official permission, and chance finds must be reported to the heritage authorities.