To close out this month devoted to French sacred art, I've just added a profile of L'Abbe Maurice Morel to the Sacred Artists section. Father Morel is the first artist-priest to be represented in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. Less well known than his contemporary, Father Marie-Alain Couturier, who enlisted well known modernist artists like Le Corbusier and Henri Matisse to create sacred art, Morel was also a pivotal figure in promoting the cause of contemporary art in the French Roman Catholic Church. Unlike Couturier, he stayed committed to his double vocation of cleric and artist all through his career, devoting the latter years of his life almost exclusively to art-making, mostly in an abstract style. The 19 new works in my collection give a good overview of Morel as an artistic experimenter. A series of simple line drawings show the influence of his early mentor, Poet-Artist Max Jacob. There are also figurative expressionist works, recalling the sacred art of Morel's good friend, Georges Rouault, and stained glass studies, reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist Alfred Manessier, another close collaborator of the artist-priest. (John Kohan)