Just days before the Easter Triduum, Father Michael Pfleger and St. Sabina Parish unveiled a bronze statue of Jesus weeping over the body of a man with bullet holes in his back on March 25.

Titled “Thou Shall Not Kill,” the statue faces Racine Avenue at West 78th Place and sits below a memorial wall of people killed by gun violence in the community. It will be lit up at night.

“Two things we want to make sure people understand: Number one, God weeps, at our children, our families, our members being killed,” Pfleger said.

Gesturing to the memorial wall, Pfleger said he wanted people to remember that those are people who were murdered.

“While violence, we’re told, is getting better, one life lost is not acceptable,” Pfleger said. “For the ones who are saying it’s getting better, if you’re the parent of the life lost, it’s not better to you because your child is no longer here.”

A graduate of St. Sabina Academy was killed the week before the statue was unveiled, Pfleger said, and he was to celebrate the funeral the following day. He also buried a 19-year-old who was shot and killed the week before.

“We must be as aggressive at building peace as the violence is at taking our lives and our children’s lives,” he said.

Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz donated the statue to the parish because he knew of the work that it does for nonviolence, Pfleger said. The parish earlier purchased another of Schmalz’s sculptures; that statue is also displayed on 78th Place.

Another replica of “Thou Shall Not Kill” is on display in a garden at the Catholic Charities’ Father Augustus Tolton Peace Center in the city’s Austin neighborhood.

Pfleger hopes that the statue will help people think about the impact of gun violence.

“To me, art speaks strong,” he said. “Sometimes an art piece or a picture is stronger than anything you can say about the issue. If you speak, you speak one time. This sits here 24/7. You would not believe how many people during the week stop at this wall and pray.

“I hope that people who walk down here and stop and look at that are touched, are moved, are convicted. To see a body lying on the ground with bullets in it — if that doesn’t convict you, you’re beyond conviction in my mind.”

Several women from Purpose Over Pain, a parish ministry for mothers who have lost children to gun violence, joined Pfleger for the press conference.

“On April 4 this year, it will be 18 years without my son,” said the group’s leader, Pamela Bosley, whose son Terrell was gunned down in 2016.

Since her son’s murder, more than 10,000 people have died by gun violence in Chicago, she said.

“They’re not just numbers,” Bosley said. “We’re trying to shine light on the death of children, that these are our children and they are human beings. They should still be here but they’re not because of gun violence.”

Veronica Higgins’ son was killed on May 17, 2023. He was turning his life around and wanted to become a truck driver, Higgins said during the press conference.

“My baby wasn’t perfect, but he was mine,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I pray for any mother not to have to go through this pain. It’s a horrible pain.”

She called for people to put the guns down.

“The hurt that you leave the family is really unbearable,” Higgins said.

“Before coming here today, I went to the cemetery to place flowers on my son Joel Valdez’s grave site. Today marks two years since he was killed in a mall. He was shot five times in the chest,” said Pheobe Valdez. “Not only was Joel killed on March 25, 2022, but I was killed. His little sister was killed. Everybody has been affected by my son’s death.”

She, too, called for an end to the violence.

“My prayer is also that hearts will be changed because it’s only by God’s spirit that hearts can be changed and we need hearts to be changed so that the guns can be put down,” Valdez said.