Churches respond with prayer, assistance - World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks, 2001

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 21, 2001 by Patricia Lefevere

What do people do when the world is collapsing into a carpet of glass shards, bricks and metal? As a specter that some compared to Dante's Inferno, others to the Apocalypse, reigned across this city's financial district last week, many, perhaps most, turned to prayer.

While thousands went to church, many simply dropped to their knees on the sidewalks of New York, watching in disbelief as workers jumped from the fiery heat of the melting twin towers of the World Trade Center. An act of monumental terror whose victims might remain nameless and numberless forever brought New Yorkers and those around the nation to their knees on the day that many already call 911.

For the church it was the worst of times, which some compared to a battlefield, and which others likened to -- if not the best of times -- certainly a moment when much of the city and region focused its attention on God and on love of neighbor. "People are turning to their churches," said Scott Stepp, coordinator of public affairs and development for Catholic Charities of the Rockville Centre, N.Y., diocese. "The church provides the place for people to come together in this tragedy."

U.S. Catholic bishops, as well as Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders, called for prayer, while throughout the country, people came to churches, synagogues and mosques. News programs ran listings of scheduled prayer services. Virtually every Catholic church in the United States scheduled a special service Sept. 11 or 12, or opened for private prayers.

Mourning losses

Across the New York region, churches mobilized to aid the shocked and the suffering. And Catholic leaders were not only consoling the suffering. They were mourning their own losses as well.

Within minutes after the first hijacked American Airlines jetliner slapped its payload against the World Trade Center's north tower, the New York Fire Department mobilized hundreds of firefighters from Lower Manhattan to be joined by units from across the five boroughs. Among the first to arrive -- and soon to be confirmed dead -- was the New York Fire Department chaplain, Franciscan Fr. Mychal Judge, 68. Judge died under falling debris as he prayed and ministered to a fallen fireman -- one of more than 300 firefighters who reportedly perished, as first the south tower and then the north collapsed.

As Judge lay dying, New York's Cardinal Edward Egan was administering the last rites to the gravely injured at St. Vincent's Hospital in lower Manhattan. The hospital cared for more than 300 of those injured. At Chelsea Pier, not far from where the towers collapsed and where a medical triage unit was set up, local priests also anointed the fallen and brought pastoral support.

Later, reports confirmed that Fr. Francis E. Grogan, a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, was a passenger on United Airline Flight 175, the second plane to strike the World Trade Center.

The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement at Garrison, N.Y. -- 60 miles north of the tragedy -- commenced a 30-day vigil, opening Pilgrim Hall for prayer and meditation 24 hours a day. They also provided a cloth pall on which people could inscribe the names of loved ones who have died.

"A lot of people all over the world live with, and die by, violence every day," said Atonement Fr. James Gardiner, who directs Graymoor's Spiritual Life Center in Garrison. "It's never come quite this close to us before." As casualties mount and numbers become names of loved ones, colleagues and neighbors, "we can only pray with one another for an end to violence in all its manifestations, for peace of mind and heart for all who have suffered so unjustly, and for tender mercies for all whom we must now commit to God's care."

Catholics in New Jersey -- many of whom witnessed the destruction of the twin towers from bedroom and office communities across the Hudson River -- were quick to offer their parishes, hospitals and social service agencies to the victims.

Ferries crossed the Hudson with the injured as well as with workers who had escaped from the towers before their collapse. The day after the disaster, the same boats began to bring the dead to makeshift morgues in Bayonne and Jersey City.

Meanwhile, stories of escapes brought tears of jubilation and relief to countless loved ones. Tom Rottenberger, a catechist at St. Martin of Tours in Bethpage, Long Island, slipped out of his twin towers bank office to attend morning Mass and was safely outside the World Trade Center when disaster struck.

Five men who escaped the burning towers but could find no way to return to New Jersey tried to swim across the Hudson and were picked up by a police rescue boat. When they were dropped on shore, they ran to Our Lady of Czestochowa church in Jersey City, arriving wet in only their trousers. The men apologized to Fr. Thomas Iwanowski, telling the pastor they just "had to come to church."

The church hall of the once-Polish, now largely Hispanic parish soon became a center for food donations from restaurants and supermarkets and a clearing house for local Jersey residents, thousands of whom commuted to the twin towers daily and could not get home. The church also took in children from a school near the towers that was evacuated.