The Stations of the Cross at Gesu were gifts by a donor who wished to remain anonymous. The donation
of the stations was announced at Christmas Mass in 1902. Joseph Sibbel of New York was commissioned to
make the stations. The design of the Gesu stations is almost a duplicate of the stations at Saint Francis Xavier
College Church in St. Louis.
Each station is a permanent part of the walls of the church and appears as a sculptured statue projecting
from the wall in a frame sitting on a base. The fourteen representations of the passion of Christ are unusual
in that they are not painted on a canvas, but are made of a plaster composition resting on heavy moulded bases.
The statues are about three-quarter life size.
The frames and bases of each of the fourteen stations took about three weeks to construct (in the boiler room
of the church). The frames are moulded in a German Gothic style pointed arch. At the pointed top of the frame
is a cross with decorated pinnacles on either corner. The distance from the base of the frame to the top is
thirteen feet, while the top piece of the frame is six feet high. Michael Clark, an artist from New York City,
made the frames and assisted in placing the stations on the walls.
The stations at Gesu were blessed on Good Friday evening, 1903, by Rev. A. J. Burrowes, S.J., then president of Marquette
College. The stations were not entirely finished at that time as the work of lettering and painting them had
yet to be completed.
Click here if you would like to pray the stations online.
