Thirty years ago, Bill Tomes started the Brothers and Sisters of Love in response to a direct call from God. He wore a tattered denim habit and made it his mission to offer love to a group that many find distinctly unlovable — the young men who grew up in the city’s toughest neighborhoods and joined the gangs that plagued the streets.

He did everything he could, up to and including walking between rival groups shooting at each other, to demonstrate that he loved them.

Tomes is retired now, but his work goes on through the efforts of Brother Jim Fogarty, who joined Tomes in 1986, and Megan Cottam, who serves as the organization’s director of development. The men call themselves “brothers” but do not belong to a specific religious community.

But don’t expect Fogarty and Cottam to stand between the shooters. Their ministry has changed, Fogarty said, because the environment in which they serve has changed. While there’s still plenty of urban poverty and despair and violence, the gangs aren’t so organized or predictable anymore.

“When Brother Bill started this, we would be between these big CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) high rises, and the gang in one would be shooting at the gang in the other one,” Fogarty said. “Each one had their own gang.”

Now nearly all of those high rises are gone, and the old gang structure has turned to rubble as well. Violence now is just as likely to occur between rival factions of the same gang or between individual gang members as between separate gangs, and their drug markets and shootings have both gone mobile.

“Now people are much more likely to go in search of someone to shoot,” Fogarty said. “It is much more likely for a car to be involved.”

Instead of the static drug markets in the ground floors of public housing high rises, gangs deal drugs in front of houses and on street corners and just pick up and move if they are attracting unwelcome attention.

“It used to be that Bill and I would walk through the lobbies, walk through the drug markets, and they would have to interact with us, because they wouldn’t leave,” Fogarty said. “Now they just go in the house, and it’s kind of uncomfortable to just stand in front of a house waiting for someone to come back outside.”

But the ministry hasn’t totally changed; Fogarty and Cottam still meet people and make contacts just by walking. At least once a week, they walk through the Back of the Yards neighborhood, greeting everyone and being visible. They do the same thing in the Cabrini Green rowhouse area, and they are adding the neighborhood around St. Columbanus Church to their itinerary. They also remain active in the Dearborn Homes, a housing project at Michigan Avenue and 29th Street.

For the walks, they still wear habits, Fogarty in head-to-toe denim, Cottam in a white alb with a denim scapular. They also wear them when they go to the scene of a shooting. In those cases, the mission is to be a visible sign of God’s love, to be available to all.

But when they make personal visits to families of shooting victims, or just people they have connected with on the street, they take the habits off, usually wearing jeans and polo shirts with the Brothers and Sisters of Love logo on them.

Cottam and Fogarty still sometimes find themselves in situations that are uncomfortable or even frightening, especially when emotions are running high in the aftermath of violence.

“When I get to somewhere where I am afraid, I go back to loving and trusting God and he casts the fear out,” he said.

Cottam spoke about a time the two were in Back of the Yards just after a shooting. As they walked and looked for people who needed comfort, they found themselves a couple of blocks outside their familiar territory, approaching a park where a restive crowd had gathered. They had two choices: go forward into the park, or turn back in full view of the crowd, making it clear to all that they were running away.

Fogarty, not wanting to force Cottam into a situation where she was afraid, asked her to decide. She decided to move forward, and they found themselves embraced by people asking for rosaries and were invited to visit the family of the shooting victim.

“It was really moving,” Fogarty recalled. “Those are the times when bonds are built. That’s where the grace is.”