Frederick Franck (1909–2006) was five years old in 1914 when Germany invaded Belgium just half a mile from his house in a tiny Dutch border town. The First World War’s carnage didn’t square with the values he’d learned from his agnostic father, whose maxim was to do good, nor with the appreciation for beauty he had absorbed from his country’s Catholic heritage. Fascinated by the religious symbols that surrounded him, clearly pointing to some transcendent mystery that no one could adequately explain to him, by age twelve Franck had begun to create symbols of his own.

Through the weeds, Frederick Franck’s sculpture park Pacem in Terris still speaks.