Humor is generally in short supply in religious works of art, so, the last of the three artists to be featured this month is a welcome addition to the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. London-born Irish Artist Brian Whelan combines the sacred and the mundane, the cosmic and the comic in idiosyncratic creations that no less a sacred art critic than Sister Wendy Becket has described as “clear, strong, prayerful work with joy at its center.” Whelan is on a mission to to bring art back into churches. He did a cycle of paintings about the life of Edith Cavell, the British nurse sentenced to death by German forces for aiding Allied soldiers in World War I that now hangs in Norwich Cathedral, where she is buried, and a nine-panel installation on Jerusalem the Holy City with imaginary scenes of sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for Washington's National Cathedral on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2016. A quartet of Whelan works in the collection are now on view in his new profile page in the Sacred Artists section. (John Kohan)