Two weeks ago, the names of 350 homicide victims in Camden and Philadelphia were read in the chronological order of their deaths this year over a loudspeaker between classes at St. Joseph's Preparatory School in North Philadelphia.
It took most of the day.
After school the next day, students at the Jesuit high school held a prayer service and erected hundreds of commemorative crosses on the lawn.
And on Nov. 21, Our Lady of Good Counsel, a Roman Catholic church in Moorestown - where there have been four homicides in 40 years - planted 60 crosses on the church's lawn in memory of the victims in Camden, a city beset by violence.
The crosses in South Jersey and Philadelphia are placed in solidarity with the Camden antiviolence group Stop Trauma on People (STOP), which began putting up crosses in October in front of Camden City Hall.
Many of those involved are driven by religious conviction. In Moorestown, Thomas Kolon, a deacon at Our Lady of Good Counsel and a physician, said he was moved to help by the Hippocratic Oath.
The Rev. Jeff Putthoff, a Jesuit involved with STOP and a visiting priest at Our Lady of Good Counsel, asked several religious institutions in the region, including the parish and St. Joseph's Prep, to speak out about the violence in Camden.
Kolon's son, Brendan, 17, a Prep senior who helped put up the crosses at the school, said they put "all these . . . deaths in perspective. When you see it on the news, it doesn't hit you in the same way this has."
Father and son said neither knew of the other's involvement in the cause until the older Kolon asked the younger for help in planting the crosses at the church.
Camden, a city of 77,000 people, is seemingly perpetually ranked as one of the nation's most violent cities. On Monday, resident Rondell Arnett, 23, became was the city's 61st homicide victim, the most in a year since 1995, when the count reached 58.
As of Tuesday afternoon, there had been 299 homicides in Philadelphia, 25 fewer than in all of 2011 in the city of 1.5 million people.
The compassion at St. Joseph's Prep is "about who we are as an institution, who we are in regards to our faith," said Sam Deitch, director of the school's Ignatian Service program.
In the cafeteria, there are two large crosses with the homicide tally of each city, Deitch said. On Monday, the painted numbers were crossed out with a marker and updated.
"We come into this concrete slab of a building from all over the place, and we get to interact with folks from the neighborhood generally when we are providing them a service, like turkeys on Thanksgiving," Deitch said.
But, he said, "our students aren't aware of the reality our neighbors are living in. That's something that really needs to change."
Deitch said that a quarter of the school's nearly 1,000 students hail from suburban communities in South Jersey, but also, some come from Camden.
Members of Deitch's family have worked at Hopeworks 'N Camden, a nonprofit group focused on youth development that Putthoff runs.
Thomas Kolon, a pediatric urologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said he hoped parishioners, including some who work in Camden or visit attractions there such as the Adventure Aquarium, will be motivated by the crosses to work with Camden residents to improve their community.
He said the white crosses put up by fellow parishioners acknowledge the violence in Camden.
"It's not on anyone's radar," he said, but Catholics "are called by Christ to help others."
As a physician, he added, "our entire profession is called to help others. It's not just about healing the body; it's also healing the soul."
The church's youth group wrote the victims' names on the crosses, Kolon said. He said the crosses would soon be moved from the front lawn to a side prayer garden to make room for a Nativity scene. But they will remain up until Lent.
Kolon said the reaction in Moorestown had been positive.
In Camden, the hand-painted crosses at City Hall have become controversial.
Councilman Brian Coleman said scores of crosses underscore the city's image as dangerous and could discourage visitors and business.
The STOP group has said the crosses are intended to remember the victims, decry the trauma inflicted on residents by poverty and violence, and shame officials into action.
Putthoff said he wept when he saw a picture of the crosses in Moorestown.
"I cried for the simple fact that someone acknowledged the pain," he said. "That solidarity, that support, doesn't take away the murder. . . . What it does is create a space where someone can begin to heal."
Contact Darran Simon at 856-779-3829 or dsimon@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @darransimon.
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