A statue of the Virgin Mary outside St. Michael Church on North Clinton Avenue lost its head earlier this month, apparently knocked down by vandals.

Church staff found the chest-high marble statue toppled a week ago. It has happened twice before, but the damage was never so severe, or so upsettingly suggestive.

The head is now sitting on a shelf in the church office, Rev. Michael McGrath said.

"I'm sure (the statue) has been there for decades," he said. "It's very disheartening. There's no need for this kind of thing."

The church was founded in 1873, when the neighborhood was known as "Butterhole," thanks to all the Germans and their small dairies. The current building was inaugurated in 1890 and remains the first bold vision as one travels north from downtown on Clinton Avenue.

Across the street is an Autozone store, and behind that a vacant house with a hard-packed yard, grubby with weeds, bottle caps and dime bags. Glass bits and sharps glisten as the sun rises and crackle underfoot. A battered Tupperware jug with "used needles" smeared on the side in red paint sits empty.

More:Rochester targets Clinton Ave. heroin 'shooting galleries'

More:Two Rochester men shot at North Clinton Avenue park

There used to be a fence separating the Autozone parking lot and the yard, but it's been torn down. In its place now is a tattered homemade banner, a bed sheet.

The message spray-painted on it is: "WHAT'S THE PLAN?" Beneath it, and painted onto the house, are the letters R.I.P., and 20 names, not counting duplicates: Lindsay, Shannon, Justin, Adam, Matt, Jack, Steve, Shane R., Shane A., Savannah, and so on.

The Blessed Mary on the lawn of St. Michael has no head. But in the vacant yard across the street, someone has posted a Via Crucis: "A map of the stations of the double-cross," it says.

Station I: "Man turns to smack H tar chiba or chiva; to junk brown sugar or shag; to mad dragon dope or china white; to white girl or white boy; to black tar or black pearl"

Station II-IV are missing. The stations are just index cards with red Sharpie, tacked to the side of the boarded up house. They probably got torn off or blew away.

Station V: "A friend drives him to rehab"

Station VI: "A therapist consoles his fearful heart on the day of his release"

Station VII: "An hour later he cops a bag and gives wings"

Station VIII: "Come evening he lies to his mother"

Station IX: "One last time he swims in the channel"

Station X is missing.

The last two stations are across the yard on a leaning, hole-pocked fence that borders its north side. The debris lies there in greater density, either because that's where it was dropped or because the wind pushed it there.

Station XI: "His heartbeat slows and then stops"

"Station XII: "He dies behind a dumpster"

There is also a poem, written in orange, 16 neat lines on the basement door. It is titled "Lost Cause." It begins:

"I have been lost

So I know what it cost

I have also been found

Dead on the ground

Tie on my arm

Needle in my hand"

The house and the yard sit at the corner of North Clinton and Clifford avenues. A footpath is worn in the grass from people crossing through.

An early light suffuses La Avenida. Children in their maroon and navy blue school uniforms wait with their parents for buses along the main road. The delis and bodega welcome their first customers. Young men circle slowly on bicycles.

The former St. Michael rectory building is now a daycare, and the church has been working with police to keep drug users off both properties.

"We find them even right next to the church, next to the Virgin Mary statue," he said. "It's all crazy.

"There was a guy out here using just the other night, and he was kind of rocking one of our big heavy planters, so I thought – 'Is that the guy?' But we don’t have any proof."

A thin man walks along where the fence used to be at the back of the Autozone parking lot, scanning the ground. He stops at the banner and glances through the list of names.

"They all dead?" he asks. It seems so.

"I hate it, but I use it," he says, turning back along the fence. "I hate it."

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com