Because of the many pilgrims, a chapel was built next to the cross a few years later in the second half of the 16th century from pious donations of the people and probably also from endowment funds of wealthy citizens of Bonn, about 50 m from the beginning of today’s Stationsweg in the direction of the Kreuzberg church and 50 m to the left into the terrain. Due to the confessional conflicts of the Reformation and its consequences, the turmoil of the 30 Years War (1618-1648) as well as the effects of the weather, this chapel fell into disrepair.

Elector Ferdinand of Cologne, at the insistence of the population and in view of the hardships (plague and turmoil of war), following the long tradition of the veneration of the cross and his own religious impulse, had the present Kreuzberg church built in 1627 “in a more beautiful place” on the Kreuzberg as a simple plastered brick building. It could be consecrated as early as 1628.

On this occasion, Elector Ferdinand gave the church, which was the main church of the Bonn Brotherhood of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, the image of the Mother of Sorrows (Pieta), which he had made from the “miraculous” wood of the oak of Foy-Notre-Dame near Dinant, Diocese of Liège.
Artistically and historically, it is of great value; its importance for the history of faith and piety, as well as for the development of a lively ecclesiastical community in the region and pilgrimages to the Hill of Crosses, is inestimable and continues to this day.

The Kreuzberg church possesses a relic of the cross of Christ, which was documented as “genuine” in 1734; according to other sources, it was also donated to the church on the Kreuzberg by Elector Ferdinand of Cologne.

The Brotherhood of the Seven Sorrows of the Mother of God or the “Seven Sorrows Brotherhood” consisted in its core of Bonn citizens, lay people, who felt a special commitment to the Kreuzberg in Bonn, its religious life and the spreading of the veneration of the cross as well as Marian devotion. It received its official establishment document from the Elector Ferdinand of Cologne in 1633, which was both a confirmation and a spiritual re-foundation. This greatly intensified the spread of the fraternity in the archdiocese and the pilgrimages to Mount Cross.

10 years after the construction of the Kreuzberg Church, Elector Ferdinand of Cologne had the small monastery for the Servite monks built on the tower side of the church. The Servites, a mendicant order from Italy with a German-speaking branch in Innsbruck, took over the monastery and the service to pilgrims in 1637.

More than 100 years later (1746), the Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, Clemens August, commissioned the master builder Balthasar Neumann to build the Holy Staircase, which was completed and consecrated as early as 1751. In this context, the Kreuzberg Church also received its present precious baroque furnishings.

In the course of the secularization of 1802, the state-ordered expropriation and dissolution of the monastery, the Servites had to leave Kreuzberg. The monastery was unfunctionalized into a restaurant. The last prior of the Servites, Father Heinrich Siebertz, became parish priest in Sankt Peter, Lengsdorf and from 1804 onwards occasionally looked after the Kreuzberg. After the fire of the church tower, in 1809, the property was sold on demolition. Only the determined and tenacious efforts of the Bonn court councillor Caspar Oppenhoff saved the monastery, church and Holy Staircase from demolition.

From 1815 until his death in 1828, the parish priest emeritus of Walberberg, Father Adolf Küpper, lived on Kreuzberg, where he celebrated daily Holy Mass. celebrated the Eucharist, heard confessions and administered the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

From 1828 to 1855, Bonn clergymen celebrated Holy Mass on Sundays and holidays on a temporary basis. Mass on the Kreuzberg, among them, from 1842 to 1850, the house chaplain of the Freifrau von Romberg, then owner of the Kreuzberg estate.

In 1855, the Jesuits leased the entire estate. Under their efforts, the old Kreuzberg piety revived. In 1858 the “Seven Footfalls” were created on the way to Bonn-Endenich and from 1861 to 1865 the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross around the large garden (today a park). In 1872 the Jesuits had to leave Kreuzberg as a result of the Kulturkampf. During this stormy period, from about 1874 to 1889, the Franciscan Fathers of Remagen helped to keep the Kreuzberg alive and well, or rather, “not to fall by the wayside”.
From 1889 to December 31, 1968, Franciscan monks performed the same service on the Hill of Crosses as the Servite monks once did.

At the instigation of Bishop Heinrich Tenhumberg, Bishop of Münster, in conjunction with the international Schoenstatt Movement, the property was purchased by the Ludgerusgemeinschaft e.V. in 1970. In 1980, ownership and sponsorship were transferred to Kreuzberg-Bonn e.V. The Schoenstatt Institute of the Brothers of Mary took over the management.

Together with the community of the Sisters of Charity and the surrounding parishes, the Schoenstatt Institute of the Brothers of Mary strives to revive and continue the valuable Kreuzberg pilgrimage shrine tradition and to make the House of Studies effective as a center for international education and cultural exchange and home adult education center in the service of an international Christian social order and the worldwide Church. – The church, Holy Staircase and the ancient part of the monastery are owned by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as patronage buildings.

The rector of the pilgrimage church Kreuzberg Bonn is appointed by the archbishop of Cologne.