Stations of the Cross

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, and were made 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.
 

The Stations in the Lower Church are wooden crosses, upon which a small depiction of the scene appears. These are located on the side walls of the Gathering Space.