How a Simple Frustration Became a 20-Year Mission
It started the way a lot of great things do — with a husband trying to do something nice for his wife.
Del, a retired business professional from Kansas, wanted to print some beautiful Catholic art on cards for her. Simple enough, right? Except when he went looking online, what he found was deeply disappointing.
The images were grainy. Pixelated. Cropped beyond recognition. The ones that were decent? Locked behind stock photo sites charging a fortune per download. And the masterpieces hanging in museums — Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio — might as well have been locked in a vault.
The Church has 2,000 years of breathtaking sacred art, yet modern Catholics can barely access any of it in quality worth printing.
Del realized he couldn't be the only one with this problem. So he made a decision that would define the rest of his life:
He would gather the world's greatest Catholic art under one roof — and make it available to everyone.
He assembled a team of graphic artists, art historians, and digital restoration experts — and went to work. Image by image. Restoration by restoration. Year after year.
When Del passed away in 2017, he left behind an extraordinary collection — and an unfinished mission. That's when Joe, a longtime friend, partnered with Patrick to carry Del's vision forward and reach more publishers, parishes, and educators than ever before.
Patrick was called to eternity in 2021, and since then Joe has carried the baton — expanding the collection, refining every restoration, and building the team that keeps this 20-year labor of love alive.
Using professional digital restoration techniques, the team has painstakingly brought over 2,000 sacred masterpieces back to their original glory — cleaning away centuries of damage, correcting colors faded by time, and outputting each image in museum-quality, print-ready resolution.
Today, churches, publishers, educators, and organizations across 40+ countries rely on these images for:
- Parish bulletins and newsletters
- Religious education textbooks
- Church websites and social media
- Prayer cards and holy cards
- Books and publications
- Merchandise and gifts
- Large-format prints and posters
Individual images are still available on the main site at restoredtraditions.com. But for publishers, parishes, and organizations that need volume — paying per image was never practical.
That's why we created this.



















