St. Cornelius Church (Cologne-Rath/Heumar)

Since the 11th century the area of today's parish had been attached to the parish of Urbach. On 10 September 1698 Heumar was raised to an independent parish and placed under the monastery of Deutz, whose abbot henceforth appointed monks as its priests. The community relied largely on donations, from which a Frühmessfonds was established to support a priest for the early Mass. After the Deutz monastery was dissolved, the Archbishop of Cologne appointed the priest from 1802 onwards. In 1833 the district of Rath, previously part of the parish of Merheim, was joined to Heumar. The dilapidated old church was demolished and replaced by a new building in 1834/35, with the Prussian state, as feudal lord, covering a third of the costs. In 1953 Rath was separated again and raised to its own parish, receiving a third of the parish fund as a dowry. Around the turn of the millennium Heumar, Rath, Ostheim and Neubrück merged into the Roncalli parish cluster, named after Pope John XXIII.

Against the east wall beside the apse stands the statue of St. Cornelius, regarded as the showpiece of the church; its origin and age are unknown. After the 1964 restoration it was placed on a marble console, and during the 2016 interior renovation it was moved to the left side so as not to protrude into the area of a newly installed projector. In the course of the Second Vatican Council, sculptor Sepp Hürten created a massive altar of Aachen bluestone in the 1960s. The redesigned apse bears white leaf ornaments, with a dove at its apex as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Four pillars support the opened apse wall, and between them are five golden reliefs: four Old Testament sacrifice scenes (Abel, Noah, Abraham and Melchizedek) and, in the centre, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. On the north and south walls hang paintings of the crowned Mother of God and of St. Cornelius in papal vestments, with the Stations of the Cross below them.

According to legend, the statue of St. Cornelius was washed ashore during a flood in 1784, after which Rath and Heumar were said to have been spared through the saint's intercession. In 1818 the priest Hieronymus Gymnich had a relic — part of the skullcap — transferred to Heumar from the treasury of St. Severin. A pilgrimage tradition arose that also brought economic prosperity to the area; the Cornelius feast with its fair on 16 September was well known on the right bank of the Rhine in Cologne. For the relic, goldsmith H. J. Heppekausen crafted a monstrance about 20 centimetres tall. In recent decades things have grown quieter: for the patronal feast, only a festive Mass is now held on the following Sunday evening.