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Among the very first responders to the tragedy of Sept. 11 were the pastors of parishes near the World Trade Center. Like police and firefighters, priests ran toward the World Trade Center site to do whatever they could to help.
Maryknoll Father Raymond Nobiletti, pastor of Transfiguration parish in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was one of them.
“When I was running down and everyone was running the other way…I thought I was going to see God face-to-face,” he said. But he kept going. “I think it’s God’s grace, the adrenalin—I don’t know…You don’t think about it, you just do everything you’re supposed to do.”
As the 10th anniversary of the day approached, Father Nobiletti and others spoke with CNY about what they did and what has happened in their parishes since the day the towers fell. In neighborhoods that reeked of death, there is new life. Some of those who left have moved back, new residents have moved in, construction is under way and businesses are growing. Parishes are as busy as before, or busier.
Though the attacks, and the victims, will never be forgotten, there are signs of renewal and joy.
St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street, a block or so from the World Trade Center site, became a temporary morgue on 9/11 and a place of spiritual and physical refuge for workers at the site in the weeks that followed. Primarily a service church, it saw its population drop off considerably because of the loss of thousands of office workers as well as local residents. Now there are many new residents, including young families, and that led to a joyous event last May.
“St. Peter’s had its first First Communion in 50 years,” said Father Kevin V. Madigan, the pastor.
He had been at St. Peter’s for just over two years when the planes hit the towers. He remembers the scene vividly.
“On the streets, like a snowfall, three inches of dust covered the whole area,” he said, “and that dust was, basically, the pulverization of the towers and the bodies of the people who had worked in them.” He was struck by the items mixed in with the dust: spreadsheets, family photos, personal items.
“It sort of brought it all home to me, what the event was about,” Father Madigan said. But there was no time for reflection. “I was running around trying to see where I could be of assistance because it was chaos down here,” he said. He was caught up in the collapse of the first tower and survived by running into a subway station.
Emergency workers began bringing bodies into St. Peter’s Church, and Father Donald T. Fussner, parochial vicar, stayed there and blessed them. Father Madigan kept the church open 24 hours a day, every day; those working at the site brought bedrolls and slept downstairs. Father Madigan said that mostly he spent time “talking to people, trying to keep their spirits up.”
Ten years of rebuilding and recovery have restored a sense of security and hope. Father Madigan remarked on the arrival of families with children; the parish religious education program had 70 students before 9/11 and eight afterward, and has 140 now. Attendance at weekday Masses has dropped by about two-thirds because of the loss of office workers, but the Sunday congregation has approximately doubled.
“I think that there’s a kind of trajectory toward growth,” Father Madigan said.
Father Nobiletti, pastor of Transfiguration, said that what he remembers most about 9/11 is “the way that everyone came together to help people.”
“The best of New York came out on that particular day,” he said.
The second plane hit as he was running out of his rectory. That’s when everyone began running in the opposite direction, he said. He ended up at a triage center, where people ran up and grabbed him, asking him to call their relatives and friends. He said he was stunned by the way burned flesh from the victims adhered to his own clothing.
Then the South Tower collapsed, and he ran to St. Paul’s Chapel (part of Trinity Episcopal Church) and held onto its iron fence. When a policeman shouted, “Get out! Get out!” he headed toward Broadway.
“He saved my life,” Father Nobiletti said. “If I stayed there, I would have been crushed” in falling debris from the North Tower. He made his way on foot back to Transfiguration, where the children in the school were being evacuated. They screamed when they saw him covered with ash and debris.
“That’s when I broke down,” he said.
For the next few days he was up day and night, doing what he could to comfort people. Sometimes when they wept, so did he.
“You’re a person of faith and that’s what’s important to them, but you’re also human. If you’re crying with them, they understand that humanity.”
Transfiguration’s population did not change after 9/11. Its parishioners are mostly Chinese, and they come not only from the neighborhood but also from throughout the New York City area, including New Jersey. The parish commemorates 9/11 annually with prayer.
“I think everyone recalls each year, when we have the prayers, how kind and wonderful everyone was to each other,” Father Nobiletti said.
“God is always present with us in the face of evil, and at that time, I think we all felt we were looking evil in the face,” he said. “God was present in people’s hearts and in people’s eyes and in the things people did.”
Father James P. Hayes, S.S.S., is pastor of St. Andrew’s parish on Manhattan’s Foley Square, steps from Federal Plaza, City Hall and police headquarters. He remembers “all the unsung in lower Manhattan—the ordinary person who went out of his way to help a stranger.”
Sept. 11 is “a horrible thing to remember,” he added, but “he hopes that “what we can remember is the goodness that also was reborn that day.”
He was at the same triage center as Father Nobiletti, handing out water and towels. When the South Tower began to collapse, he dived under a car for cover.
“I ended up in the wheel well. That’s what saved my life,” he said. “I realized…God saved me, and my way of giving something back would be to bless the remains of those who didn’t make it out.”
He also is a psychotherapist who has worked extensively with law enforcement personnel; his specialty is counseling those doing traumatic work like recovery of body parts.
“The morgue at Ground Zero was not a place for the mild of heart,” he said, but he was sustained by the goodness of those who went there and set about “doing what had to be done.”
His parish had begun storing food, water and clothing after the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
“We opened our house to everyone who needed assistance,” Father Hayes said. The church and its basement remained open throughout the crisis. Today it continues to serve those who work in the courts and other government institutions, as well as business people. Many families moved out, and young singles moved in, Father Hayes said. The area draws many tourists.
Musing on the effects of 9/11, he said, “It showed me that when something happens out of anyone’s control, people step up, and they step up regardless of their religion. Muslim, Jew, Protestant or Catholic, they step up and do the right thing.”
Msgr. Marc J. Filacchione is a New York City Fire Department chaplain and, since 2004, the pastor of Our Lady of Victory parish in Manhattan’s financial district. At the time of the terrorist attack he was pastor of St. Michael’s in Manhattan. On 9/11 he took a subway to West Fourth Street, got off and hailed a police car to get to the site. When the first tower collapsed, he ran into the subway with Father Madigan.
When they exited farther north, emergency workers told them to go to St. Vincent’s Hospital. Msgr. Filacchione set out on foot. He said that he remembers “the goodness of people” as he walked. Some had hoses, and they turned the water on the thick coat of debris sticking to his clothes.
“I remember a lady who was downstairs giving out water” in glasses that “looked like her best crystal, probably something she never used except on holidays,” he said.
He returned to St. Michael’s, put on clean clothes and returned to Ground Zero. He was there every day for weeks to serve at the morgue, talking with firefighters and other first responders.
At Our Lady of Victory, the weekday parish for hundreds of office workers, the staff opened the offices a people lined up for a chance to make a phone call. Today, said Msgr. Filacchione, Mass attendance has fallen off—there are fewer workers in the district—but the Mass schedule never changed. There are six Masses daily, Monday through Friday, and four on the weekend, with three hours of confessions and daily adoration on weekdays.
There is more residential space in the neighborhood now, and the local population has increased, though some leave on the weekends. “But the number certainly has gone up for Sunday Masses,” the pastor said. And although the parish population does not warrant a religious education program—children are welcome to enroll at Transfiguration—Our Lady of Victory recently confirmed about seven teens.
“We had never had a confirmation,” the pastor said.
Msgr. Filacchione said that people in the area often refer to 9/11 in conversation as a dividing line, indicating whether something happened before or after. “I don’t know if they mean to, but it just comes out,” he added. Meanwhile, development continues, and the neighborhood, like the World Trade Center site and the entire area, has many more tourists today.
“There certainly has been a recovery; you can see it,” Msgr. Filacchione said. “And what they’ve done to revitalize the area has worked.”
