Heartwheel, a sculpture involving a fractured wheel with a heart at its centre, has been erected at the St Francis Xavier Church on Gardiner Street in Dublin to honour abuse survivors who attended Jesuit schools.
Replicas are to be put on public display in Jesuit schools throughout Ireland.
It was created by sculptor John Coll, who attended the religious order’s Coláiste Iognáid in Galway.
“Survivors need the truth of their abuse to be revealed in order for them to move on with their emotional lives,” he said.
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“The image of a wheel with a heart at its centre came to mind, representing the wheel of one’s emotional life. The wheel is fractured, representing the trauma suffered. The wheel of life moves on even after trauma, allowing hope of repair.”
Heartwheel is 130cm high and is inscribed with a line from TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral: “Forgive us, pray for us, that we may pray for you out of our shame.” The inscription runs on the track of the wheel.
The 30cm replicas are to be displayed at Belvedere and Gonzaga colleges in Dublin, at St Declan’s on Northumberland Rd in Dublin city centre, at Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare, at Crescent College Comprehensive in Limerick, and at Coláiste Iognáid in Galway.
At Gardiner St, the sculpture sits on a polished Wicklow granite plinth, one ton in weight, and is inscribed with the words: “In Tribute to All the Victims of Abuse by Those Who Should Have Protected and Nurtured You. The Irish Jesuits 2024.”
Mr Coll recalled how it was commissioned two years ago “as part of the restitutive process initiated by the Jesuits for the boys affected by the abuse of Joseph Marmion.
“Survivors asked that a three-dimensional sculpture be commissioned to acknowledge their suffering and distress,” he said.
“When dealing with such an emotive issue one tends to use symbols. The head is a symbol for reason and the heart a symbol for the emotions.
He said he remembered a line from a song in the 1970s album Dancer with Bruised Knees by Kate and Anna McGarrigle: “Some say the heart is just like a wheel – when you bend it, you can’t mend it.”
Survivors “liked the heart wheel idea”, he said.
He asked them “to suggest an inscription and they proposed the line from Murder in the Cathedral, the long poem by TS Eliot dealing with the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett by King Henry II, the ultimate breach of trust.”
He described the project as “the most emotionally challenging I have experienced in my career, but also the most rewarding.”
He thanked Jesuit Provincial Fr Shane Daly “for entrusting me with the project and to those survivors whose shared experiences shaped the piece”.
Mr Coll is also responsible for the Patrick Kavanagh sculpture at the Grand Canal in Dublin as well as that of Brendan Behan at the Royal Canal.
In 2022 he created the sculpture of Jesuits’ founder St Ignatius Loyola, unveiled at Belvedere College that year to mark the 500th anniversary of Loyola’s conversion to Catholicism.
