Sister Nancyann Turner, OP Leads 25 People
in Stations of the Cross Neighborhood Walk

April 29, Detroit, Michigan – A group of 25 people took part in the Stations of the Cross Neighborhood Walk on Good Friday, April 10. Leaving the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, they stopped six times to pray, sing, and read different passages of the Scriptural story of Jesus’ passion, crucifixion and death. They prayed for new life. They sang for the revival of their city. They celebrated the hope and strength that exists in the Soup Kitchen neighborhood.

At the corner of Forest and Algonquin, the group remembered mothers and grandmothers who have sacrificed so much for their children and grandchildren. The second station recounts the story of Jesus carrying the cross and telling the women who wept for him, “Women of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28). The Capuchin group prayed for women who cry for their children, for “those mothers who had great dreams for their children and saw them get dashed by tough situations.”

Stations of the Cross Neighborhood Walk

At the head of the march, four Cook children held up a peace flag as it flapped in the wind like a sail. Three-year-old John-John focused hard on squeezing the bottom corner as tightly as he could, while his eight-year-old brother, Dante, stretched his arm up high to keep the top corner up. The oldest siblings, Joseph and Charlene, held the flag’s pole. Members of the Capuchin Choir led a song at every corner and along the way. A mother, father and child from the neighborhood joined in the middle of the walk.

The last station was the Memorial Peace Garden behind the soup kitchen, built for children from the Rosa Parks Children/Youth Program who had died. Yellow and purple crocuses waved from the garden beds and tire gardens as the group sang their last song, “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Sister Nancyann Turner, OP, founder and director of the Rosa Parks Children/Youth Program at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, concluded the prayer service with a litany of remembrance and a closing blessing. She asked each person gathered to be an Easter person. Participants called out names of their loved ones whom they wanted to be remembered: the sick, the murdered, and the dead.

The Capuchin Soup Kitchen is a human service organization that strives to provide encouragement, direction, and material assistance to poor people of the area, to promote growth and wholesome independence with respect and dignity. It is inspired by the spirit of St. Francis and sponsored by the Capuchins of the Province of St. Joseph and concerned benefactors.

Submitted by Clara Hardie and Sister Nancyann Turner, Capuchin Soup Kitchen and Rosa Parks Children Youth Program