Lucerne's Jesuit Church is the first large baroque church built in Switzerland north of the alps. First and foremost is an expression of the Catholic Church's 17th century struggle to regain spiritual leadership in the counter-reformation At the same time it does show, that the Catholics then refused to accept any discussion on major points of criticism by the protestant churches. Instead, baroque architecture displays power and glory and emphasizes exactly those parts of Catholic tradition (especially the veneration of saints) and visual culture (as opposed to the protestant emphasis on the word of the biblical scriptures).

There is perfect logic that Lucerne, seeing itself as the capital of the Catholic fraction of Switzerland in pre-modern times, should have constructed this building. Today, Jesuit Church is a major tourist attraction and serves as a concert hall while it has become almost irrelevant to local church life from a religious point of view. There are other churches in the city expressing the beliefs of Swiss Catholics after the Second Vatican Council far better (St. Karl and St. Johannes, for example).

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