European enthusiast engineers new church mass inside (9)
I believe the answer is:
frenchman
'european' is the definition.
(I know that Frenchman is a type of european)
'enthusiast engineers new church mass inside' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'engineers' could be 're' (Royal Engineers) and 're' is present in the answer.
'new' could be 'n' (common abbreviation eg NT for New Testament) and 'n' is located in the answer.
'church' could be 'ch' (abbreviation on maps etc) and 'ch' is found within the answer.
'mass' could be 'm' (symbol used in Physics e.g. f=ma) and 'm' is located in the answer.
'enthusiast' could be 'fan' (fan is a kind of enthusiast) and 'fan' is found within the remaining letters.
No letters remain.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for frenchman that I've seen before include "for whom we must be sixteen [NOUS]?" , "Monsieur is one" , "Nice chap" .)