The Hawk

Issue date: 2/21/07 Section: News

Students and administrators joined together to honor the deceased.

In 2006, the City of Brotherly Love lost 406 of its citizens to violent crimes, capping the highest murder rate the city has seen in nearly a decade. The current record is set at 500 murders in 1990, according to police statistics.

On Monday, Feb. 19, those 406 citizens lost were commemorated through a service held in a dimly lit Chapel of Saint Joseph by the Institute for Violence Research and Prevention. It was entitled "A Remembrance for Philadelphia's Victims of Violent Crime".

Richard Malloy, S.J., presided over the service, which included readings from scripture as well as the lighting of 406 red candles by students and administrators to represent those lost. As a bell tolled in the background, Paul DeVito, Associate Provost, and Valerie Dudley, Director of Diversity, read aloud the names of the victims, the flames of the candles flickering in the field of red below them, making personal and human what had before been only a statistic.

At the end of one of the tables of candles was open space that could hold 48 candles, left vacant to represent the 48 murders already committed in 2007, a pace ahead of that of 2006, said Malloy.

"I thought I knew everything about this," said Malloy, "and each time it smacks me in the face, hits me in the heart. Someday, we won't have to be lighting candles."

George Bur, S.J., Rector of the Jesuit Community, spoke as well, recounting his time as a pastor of an urban Philadelphia church and the young people he saw maimed, imprisoned, or killed while there.

"We need to step up ourselves in our communities," said Bur. "We must free ourselves from this scourge of death that plagues our land."

Most moving, however, was Catherine Young, a South Philadelphia woman whose 17-year-old son, Richard Johnson, was shot to death in the summer of 2005 two blocks from their home.

"I've come out tonight to share with you the grief that I carry," said Young.

An honors graduate from Saint Joseph's Preparatory School, Richard was planning to attend Saint Joseph's University the following fall on a full academic scholarship, said Young.

"I look at these candles and I imagine the people, and it's so hard," Young said. "The hardest thing about being a victim is that somewhere along the line you become forgotten."

Continued...

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