YOUNGSTOWN — A 6-foot bronze statue depicting a bearded man in great distress lying with one hand draped over his face seems to symbolically capture the tremendous strain, suffering and heartache the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought for countless people or their loved ones.

On the other hand, the artwork is meant to provide healing, redemption, peace, comfort and reflection.

“So many lives were lost, yet so many heroes and heroines were born,” Bishop David J. Bonnar of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown said in his remarks during a special outdoor blessing ceremony he conducted Thursday at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.

Mercy Health Mahoning Valley dedicated the memorial to remember and honor people who have lost their lives since the pandemic began in March 2020, those still suffering because of the health crisis and their loved ones. It also is intended as a tribute to the countless front-line workers who made tremendous sacrifices to care for those who were and still are sick — often at great peril to their own well-being, Bonnar said.

The pandemic has brought for many people untold financial struggles, isolation, sadness and other life-changing hardships. Yet it also has revealed the best in the human spirit as well as overall compassion and others’ unexpected inner strength, the bishop added.

As so many people’s lives inexplicably changed, lots of others stepped up to assist and care for those in sickness and need. Nowhere was this dynamic more evident that in the health care field, he continued.

Bonnar also read from the Book of Matthew, which relates to many of the ways reactions and responses to the pandemic have unfolded. The passage says in part, “For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; a stranger and you welcomed me; naked and you clothed me, in prison and you visited me.”

Another Bible reading was from the Book of Ezekiel.

Bonnar told the crowd of about 150 hospital personnel and others that, despite the pandemic’s far-reaching scope and effects, people should resist allowing the “scourge” to define them. Instead, “we should define it,” he continued.

Echoing that sentiment was Paul Homick, the Mercy Health Foundation-Mahoning Valley’s president, who also placed a time capsule in the statue’s base that is to be opened March 11, 2120, 100 years to the day after the first COVID-19 case was documented March 11, 2020. It contains a series of letters and other items that capture the COVID-19 crisis.

The statue outside of St. Elizabeth Hospital on Park Avenue is one of several that have been installed throughout Youngstown to memorialize the many people whose lives have been taken by the pandemic and those who continue to suffer, Homick said.

All of them were created by Canadian figurative artist and sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz, perhaps best known for the Homeless Jesus piece he created to call attention to what he saw as a large number of people living on the streets.

Also during the somber ceremony, a bell was tolled for each of several remembrances read aloud to honor the nearly 6.5 million lives lost since the pandemic started, including an estimated 1.06 million in the U.S. as well as those in the Mahoning Valley.

Also remembered were people who continue to suffer from COVID-19’s long-term effects, along with the thousands of caregivers and frontline workers “who selflessly and courageously came to work each day throughout the dark moments of the pandemic, heavily burdened by the suffering and death that they had to face as they served,” the statement reads.