Category: 2026 News

(OSV News) – Pope Leo XIV returned Sept. 7 to the Marian shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel, where he asked the Virgin Mary for aid to bring God’s word to light through “courageous and wise decisions.”

The pope traveled to Genazzano, a small town about 35 miles east of Rome, to celebrate an evening Mass at the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel on the vigil of the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The visit was the second he has made to the basilica since becoming pope. Pope Leo recalled how he previously made a surprise visit to the shrine just days after his election in the May 2025 conclave to pray before the image of the Virgin Mary to whom he has long been devoted.

“As you may remember, ‘in the early days of my pontificate, I felt the duty and a deep desire to visit Genazzano, the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel, who has accompanied me throughout my life with her maternal presence, her wisdom and the example of her love for her Son, who is always the center of my faith,'” the pope said at the start of his homily, quoting words he wrote in the shrine’s guest book on his first visit.

Reflecting on the birth of the Virgin Mary, which the Church celebrates on Sept. 8, the pope said that “Mary is the dawn of a new day, of our world finally freed from evil.”

“Let us ask her for her Good Counsel, so that we may welcome the divine Word, keep it within us, and bring it to light through courageous and wise decisions, decisions of authentic conversion,” he said.

The shrine holds special significance for Pope Leo, who visited many times prior to his election as pope. The Augustinian Province of Chicago, where then-Robert Prevost entered religious life, was dedicated to Our Lady of Good Counsel, and he has visited the Genazzano sanctuary for decades since his first visit while studying in Rome in the early 1980s.

His pilgrimages to pray before the image continued throughout his time as prior general of the Augustinians, bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, and later as a cardinal.

The shrine, entrusted to the Augustinians since the 14th century, has drawn many pilgrims over the centuries, among them several popes, including Urban VIII, Pius IX, John XXIII and John Paul II, who are depicted in frescoes on the walls of the basilica.

Pope Leo arrived in Genazzano shortly after 5 p.m. and greeted pilgrims gathered outside and inside the basilica who enthusiastically kissed his ring. He first knelt in prayer before the main altar and then visited the chapel containing the revered image of Our Lady of Good Counsel, where he prayed silently and presented a golden rose, a traditional papal gift.

Before Mass, a new fresco on the wall of the basilica was unveiled depicting the current Augustinian pope kneeling before the Marian image.

In his homily for the Church’s celebration of Mary’s birth, Pope Leo invited prayerful contemplation of the virtues of the Virgin Mary.

“We celebrate the birth of a little girl called to become the Mother of her Creator, the Mother of God who saves,” he said. “And yet, she is born simply a child, like the daughters and granddaughters we hold in our arms.”

The pope quoted St. Thomas of Villanova, a 16th-century Augustinian bishop and theologian, who pondered why the Gospels did not provide more details about Mary’s life, describing this as an invitation to contemplate her holiness and virtues.

Pope Leo commented that “St. Thomas invites us to engage in this wonderful exercise of the imagination,” adding that contemplative prayer is especially important today “in times of destruction and uncertainty.”

St. Thomas of Villanova wrote, “Let your imagination run wild … paint in the depths of your soul a young woman who is most pure, most prudent, most beautiful, most devout, most humble, most gentle, full of every grace, rich in sanctity, adorned with all the virtues, embellished with all the charisms, absolutely pleasing to God.”

(OSV News) – Joseph Connor had his back turned to the large window of his 36th floor office when he “suddenly more felt than heard” the massive impact of a commercial jet slamming into the north tower of the World Trade Center a third of a mile away on Sept. 11, 2001.

As Connor watched pages and pages of office paper slowly rain down from the burning skyscraper against the clear sunny sky, the realization hit that his cousin Steven Schlag, a bond trader at the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, worked high up in one of the towers.

The banker suspected the number of lives lost was quickly rising as he frantically tried to call his cousin, a very close relative. Then, the middle of the second tower burst into a fiery ball, struck by a second jet. For Connor, this confirmed a terrorist attack.

“How could this happen again?” he remembers asking himself. “(Steven) had a wife — a foreign-born wife, like my mom was — and three kids. My mom had two. But why, God? What? How did you let this happen?”

He knew well the anguish of a young widow left with young children. It was the story of his mother on the day she lost her husband to a terrorist bombing 26 years earlier, at a historic tavern near his Wall Street office.

Connor, 60, recently described to OSV News the devastation that unfolded before his eyes in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, as the United States prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The al-Qaida-led attacks in New York and Washington, with a thwarted attempt failing in Pennsylvania, left close to 3,000 people dead.

Connor said he questioned God after seeing “specks jumping” from the blazing towers to their deaths on 9/11.

“How are people left to make a choice: whether to burn or drop 1,000 feet?” Connor asked. “So, that’s something I had struggled with. But I think over time, my faith has gotten much stronger, and certainly in the last decade or so, I think it has even gotten more so.”

Connor, a regular Massgoer, credits his stronger faith after the losses in part to his son, an Augustinian friar studying for the priesthood. He said his son’s faith has helped him to “become more introspective … and understand what it means to be Catholic … to really embrace God and embrace Jesus.”

Now a New Jersey-based anti-terrorism advocate, Connor lost his father days after his ninth birthday. On Jan. 24, 1975, 33-year-old Frank Connor was at lunch at Fraunces Tavern in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district when he and three other men were killed, and nearly 60 were injured in a bombing. The Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a Puerto Rican separatist group, claimed responsibility.

Connor said he has had no inclination to walk away from God, unlike some others he knew who lost loved ones on 9/11. The experience, he said, of losing his father and being raised by a mother and grandmother who were devout, Irish women kept him grounded and better able to handle the loss of his close cousin, whom he described as tough and funny.

“We went to church and all those things, but Grandma Connor always instilled in us never to be raised with hate,” said Connor.

His cousin Jean Schlag Nebbia of Naples, Florida, also clung to her faith shortly after her older brother Steven, who was 41, died in the attack.

“I never blamed God for 9/11. I felt that you’re given the gift of life, and then you’re given the gift of choice. And sometimes there’s bad people and they make bad choices, and other people are hurt through bad choices,” Nebbia, a former special needs teacher’s aide, told OSV News.

Three months after the attacks, she came to a realization.

Nebbia, 63, described watching news footage of the burning towers obsessively, trying to find her brother among those jumping out of the buildings. On the third month of non-stop viewing, her husband gave her some advice a Christian coworker had given him: “to say ‘I’m going to put this in God’s hands.'”

“The moment he said that to me is the moment I started to live … giving up my worries and giving up the unknown,” Nebbia told OSV News. “You know, ‘God, I need a good night’s sleep. I’m going to put this in your hands.’ That, to me, was a turning point. And I don’t know if I could have done that if I didn’t have my Catholic base.”

Nebbia said her 12 years of Catholic education and growing up as a regular Massgoer gave her a solid grounding in faith in God’s providence. She said she goes to God in prayer for almost every aspect of her life because “he has my back” just like her older brother, whom she was very close to, “always did.”

Vera Murphy Trayner also leaned heavily on her faith after losing her husband, Patrick Murphy.

On the morning of the attack, Trayner prayed the rosary fervently as she rushed home from her son’s nursery school while pushing him in his stroller. Murphy, 36 and the vice president for technology at the resource and management consulting firm Marsh McLennan, was on the 97th floor of the first tower that was hit three floors below. His department had moved there just months prior.

Trayner’s go-to devotion “always” came through for her with prayers answered.

“I prayed and prayed and prayed that Patrick would find a way out. He was so smart … and athletic and young … and it was the first prayer that I made that was not answered,” Trayner told OSV News.

She said she “was disappointed” but also held firm to the belief that her husband’s death “happened for a reason” and she “had to accept it.”

“Well, it’s free will. The terrorists, obviously they’re guided by evil and they were able to do such an evil act,” Trayner said. “I don’t want to feel sorry for myself because all through history, there have been traumas, wars. There’s death. There’s fires.”

Now 60, Trayner said her studies at Jesuit-run Boston College opened her up further to the faith during difficulties.

“I was able to ask questions and being a woman in the Catholic faith, being a widow in the Catholic faith, being a mother, I read quite a bit of different books … answering my own questions and talking with people,” she said.

Trayner, a Tampa-based college counselor who remarried in 2006, has relied on the Holy Spirit “to give me the right words,” the Blessed Mother to intercede in raising her children, and the saints, especially Joan of Arc, to guide her through every major challenge.

Still, she said, as she described breaking into a sweat while speaking to OSV News, she remains haunted by the thought of how her first husband must have suffered as the north tower became engulfed in an inferno and collapsed.

Nebbia admitted that as a Catholic, in recent weeks she has begun to struggle with forgiving the terrorists.

“I just feel like I don’t need to forgive them. That’s not my job. So now I’m questioning myself, like, ‘Alright, how do I go about forgiving these people, how?’ That was their goal. They achieved their goal. Now, I question that part of me,” she said.

Connor said he has come to accept his family’s tragic losses.

“Maybe I didn’t understand the reason, and maybe I don’t understand the reason why Steve was killed and the other 3,000 people, but I do feel that God does have a reason for it,” he said.

ARLINGTON, Va. (OSV News) – At 9:37 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington killing 184 people — 125 people inside the Pentagon and 53 passengers and six crew members aboard the plane.

Twenty-five years later, the repaired facade of the Pentagon still looks a little brighter and the area outside that part of the building is now the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. There is no central statue. Instead, there are 184 stainless-steel benches, one for each person who lost their life there.

Each bench has the name and age of the victim with a shallow pool of water underneath. There are trees, gravel and dramatic lighting best seen at night.

Interestingly, each bench was placed according to where the victim was — those representing the Pentagon victims are oriented toward the building, while the plane victims are remembered with benches placed in the direction the plane approached the building.

That plane was one of four hijacked commercial airliners that attacked the U.S. that day, killing 2,977 people and injuring thousands more.

In New York, 2,753 people died in the Twin Towers collapse, brought down by two of the planes. Forty people died in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when passengers and crew fought back against hijackers on the fourth airliner, forcing it to crash in a field near Shanksville.

Officials believe the fourth plane was headed for the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

Inside the Pentagon, a new chapel, built on the impact site of the attack, has a 9/11 etched glass memorial piece and is adjacent to a memorial area with a list of the Pentagon victims’ names etched in stone. Small pieces of paper and pencils are available for visitors to do a rubbing of the names. There is also a reflection room nearby.

Twenty-five years ago, Father Daniel Mode, an Arlington diocesan priest, was a U.S. Navy Reserve lieutenant serving reserve duty at the Pentagon as a staff officer for the chief of chaplains in the Navy Annex.

He would have been in that exact area of the Pentagon on 9/11, having frequent meetings there. Instead, he was at his parish, Queen of Apostles in Alexandria.

He heard about the attacks, and he stayed with the parish children waiting for their parents who worked in the Pentagon to pick them up. He celebrated an impromptu Mass. And then he received a phone call. There was a list of people who could’ve been in that part of the building and calls were being made to account for everyone.

“It quickly came home to me,” he told the Arlington Catholic Herald, the diocesan news outlet.

Much has changed in the past quarter-century — barricades around Washington memorials and government buildings; Transportation Security Administration enforcement at airports; and an underlying sense of “could it happen again” for many.

Steven Jarvis, who retired from the U.S. Air Force and now works in support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon “now has a chapel and the Eucharist is present 24/7 — a testament to how God can turn bad to good, in many ways.”

He said in the 1990s, Catholic Mass was celebrated in a big auditorium with the altar on a stage.

“After the plane hit, they made an indoor memorial and a chapel with a sacristy and the tabernacle,” he said. The Pentagon Memorial Chapel opened on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

“In the morning, I kneel down outside the door because I know the Lord is in there, and at the end of the day,” said Jarvis, a parishioner of St. Michael in Annandale. “The chapel is always open.”

Jarvis is volunteer coordinator for the Pentagon Catholic Community, working with “a dedicated and devout team” of Catholic volunteers, both military and civilian.

There are 175 members with an average of 25 to 35 people attending daily Mass. It peaks on first Fridays, and they move back to the auditorium for Ash Wednesday and holy days of obligation, he said.

“The chapel is multi-denomination,” Jarvis said, “but we are the big players because we are here every day.” Catholic Masses are celebrated at 11:30 a.m. on weekdays and confession is offered before and after Mass.

Two religious orders offer the daily Mass. Dominican priests are responsible for Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception celebrate Mass on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Dominican Father Vincent Ferrer Bagan, director of music for both the diocese and the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, has been on the rotation for four years.

“It is quite moving,” he said. Coming from a rural town in Minnesota and having been in high school on 9/11, he said he never would have imagined he would be at the Pentagon someday. “It’s a privilege to interact with Catholics who serve in that building, many who are in parishes in our diocese,” he said.

“We always have each Mass offered with a pointed intention but having the chapel in that location is a good reminder for the priest and lay faithful … to remember to pray for those who lost their lives that day and all of the military personnel who have lost their lives all these years,” he said.

In the outside corridor near the chapel, Father Mode said a spot of black soot is still visible on the wall from the flames on 9/11. Perhaps it is a reminder of what was lost and what remains.

(OSV News) – The offering placed before the altar on Sept. 11, 2001, was unlike any ever seen at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Manhattan’s Financial District: the lifeless body of 68-year-old Franciscan friar and New York City Fire Department Chaplain Father Mychal Judge.

He was killed when the 110 stories of the World Trade Center’s south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., blasting debris into the adjacent north tower lobby where Father Judge was stationed. At the moment, he reportedly was repeatedly praying, “Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!” He was shortly afterward carried from the apocalyptic site.

Some four blocks away, St. Peter’s own roof had been struck by landing gear from one of two hijacked jets smashed into both towers that morning. Father Judge’s journey there was captured in an instantly iconic photo seen worldwide — dust-covered, slumped in a chair and already shockingly pale as he was carried by five men.

Since he lost his life, Father Judge — a friar for 47 years; a priest for 40 — has been hailed as a hero, suggested for sainthood, and praised as a selfless friend not only to first responders, but also to the poor, sick and forgotten of the Big Apple’s sometimes tough streets.

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in recorded history, friends of Father Judge shared memories of his life and loss, and reflected on his legacy.

“People would often say about him, when you talk to him it was like you were the only person before him,” said Father Kevin Mullen, a Franciscan friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe and former president of Siena University in Loudonville, New York, where he currently teaches.

“He engaged you fully; he was not looking around for who he could talk to next. He was fully present to you,” Father Mullen told OSV News. “And that’s what made a difference to a lot of people about Mychal Judge — they could talk to him, bare their souls, share their good news, share their bad news. And he was going to be there for them.”

— ‘He was there. He was present’ —

On the morning of 9/11, Father Mullen, stationed in a parish approximately 15 miles from midtown Manhattan, was responsible for a funeral liturgy.

“I was aware before I started the funeral that the first tower had collapsed,” he recalled. “And when I finished the funeral, I was told the second tower had collapsed. So I knew things were getting worse.”

That afternoon, he heard a radio announcement reporting an injured fire chaplain at the World Trade Center.

“And my gut said, ‘That’s Mychal Judge,'” Father Mullen said. “He was right across the street from a fire station that responded immediately.” The church where Father Judge ministered and the friary where he lived, St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street, neighbored New York City Fire Department Engine 1/Ladder 24.

“And I had no doubt he was down there,” Father Mullen said, referring to the disaster area.

To confirm his suspicion, he called the regional head of his order.

“As soon as he answered the phone — he didn’t even say, ‘Hello, Kevin’ — he just said, ‘It was Mychal.’ And I said, ‘I thought so.’ That’s how I learned.”

Father Mullen said the already crushingly tragic day immediately became painfully personal. But nonetheless, he still found himself certain of one thing.

“I felt that if Mychal was given his choice of how he would go out of this world, that would have been his choice: to be with the firefighters, literally going with his boots on. He was there. He was present.”

— ‘He resided deeper in you than you understood’ —

The first introduction Michael Daly — journalist and author of “The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge” from St. Martin’s Griffin — had to the priest was the sound of his and others’ laughter.

And it was coming from, of all places, a hospital burn unit.

Accompanying Patrick “Paddy” Brown — an FDNY captain who later died on 9/11 — Daly was there in 1994 to visit FDNY Captain John Drennan, who had been critically burned battling an apartment fire.

“So I go in,” Daly recalled, “and there’s all these guys laughing because of something this priest said — and I’m thinking, ‘Who is this guy?'”

On 9/11, Daly, a Catholic, was at the scene of the attack for the New York Daily News when the north tower collapsed. He remembers running for his life as a massive cloud of debris — chokingly dense with pulverized concrete, glass, metal and the contents of countless offices — rolled like a tsunami through the surrounding streets.

He admits he was afterward “hazy about timing and hours and all that.”

But he does know the air had finally cleared when FDNY Deputy Fire Chief Peter Hayden told him Father Judge was dead.

“And my knees just went,” recalled Daly, overwhelmed with shock. “I didn’t expect that; I didn’t know Mychal had been down there. Someone had called over the radio for the fire chaplain earlier. But I didn’t hear any response. And then — he’s gone, you know?”

“I think he just …” Daly paused, searching for the right description. “He resided deeper in you than you understood.”

— ‘A genius priest’ —

Daly described Father Judge walking the streets of New York City in his brown Franciscan habit, greeting homeless people by their first names, praying with them and distributing neatly folded cash.

Daly also recalled Father Judge often worked 16-hour days ministering at blazes and rescues — counseling firemen, their families and victims — and that he gently tended AIDS patients in an era when medical staff would not make physical contact.

After Father Judge’s death, close friends and associates revealed he was gay — but by all accounts, maintained his vow of celibacy. The response of Kevin Shea, a firefighter at FDNY Engine 40/Ladder 35 in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square, apparently typified the reaction of other first responders. “He said,” Daly recalled, “Well, if you tell me Michael Judge was gay, I’ll tell you I just had my first gay friend.”

While not “out” in the fire department, Daly said Father Judge told Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, who was struggling with his son’s gay identity.

“You know, he was a genius priest,” said Daly. “He just was.”

— ‘I sat with his body for about an hour’ —

Father Christopher Keenan, a friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, entered the Franciscans more than 60 years ago at Father Judge’s urging and became a FDNY chaplain after his friend’s death. On 9/11, he was helping in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

About 2 miles from ground zero, St. Vincent’s staff were caring for the dust-caked and dazed people who had outrun the collapse of the towers.

“I was connecting with their families to come pick them up. And about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, it kind of stopped. I left at 5:30 to walk home from 12th to 31st Street,” Father Keenan recalled. “I had a shift of confessions at 6:00. I came out of the hospital, and there’s doctors and nurses and staff with stretchers — still waiting for all the people that never came.”

Father Keenan had been looking for Father Judge.

“So when I arrived at the firehouse across the street from St. Francis of Assisi Church, I asked the guys, had they heard from Mychal? And they said, ‘He died — and his body is in the back of the firehouse here.’ They had set up sheets and cordoned off a section, where his body was in a black bag. And so I sat with his body for about an hour.”

Father Judge had been moved to Engine 1/Ladder 24 after temporarily lying in front of St. Peter’s altar.

“Then the friars came from across the street. And the firefighters gathered that were there … and we friars sang the Blessing of St. Francis … and then an ambulance took him to the morgue.”

Father Keenan noted that six from the firehouse had also died.

— Victim 0001 —

Father Judge was later numbered victim DM (Disaster Manhattan) 0001-01 of 2,753 souls eventually tallied in New York City after the World Trade Towers crumpled into an infernal landscape of fiery and smoking rubble. Father Keenan himself would spend seven months assisting in that rubble with recovery efforts, afterward contracting several forms of cancer.

In Washington that day, 184 were killed when hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Another 40 aboard United Airlines Flight 93 died when a fourth hijacked plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

“The 25th anniversary is going to be a very solemn time,” Father Mullen said. “And I hope we have that consciousness still alive in our country — that this is very, very painful, especially for the families,” he shared.

“Because a lot of people have just taken this event for granted: ‘Well, that’s history — it happened, it’s over,’ he said. “But it’s never over for those families. Never, ever, over.”

(OSV News) – For seminarians navigating years of study and discipline in formation for the priesthood, Pope Leo XIV had a reminder Sept. 3: The key to preparing for priestly ministry is focusing on “your relationship with the One who called you.”

Pope Leo encouraged future priests to use their years in seminary to ground every aspect of their formation in a deep personal relationship with God.

“The heart of the seminary experience lies here: learning to be with the Master, the Lord Jesus,” the pope said in an audience with Italian seminarians in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall.

“Every vocation is born from an intimate dialogue with God, cultivated in silence and prayer, which often occurs despite the sometimes deafening noise of the world,” the pope said.

The pope met with seminarians from two seminaries in southern Italy: the Pius XI Regional Seminary in Puglia and the Episcopal Seminary of Aversa in Campania.

“In a world so eager to celebrate self-realization, it is truly important to reiterate that none of you and none of us are here because we deserve it, but only because of a free choice made by God the Father, a sign and pledge of a gratuitous love that always anticipates us and never disappoints,” Pope Leo told the young men.

“There is no competition, no ranking, nor is it written anywhere that he chose the best: He chose those he wanted,” he added.

The pope underlined that the time spent in seminary is more necessary than ever today “in a world that is in a hurry.”

“Precisely because our times are fast-paced and noisy, we need a place and a season in life where we can learn to be present, to discern, and to allow ourselves to be formed without taking shortcuts,” he said. “The seminary is not a postponement of the mission, but rather a prerequisite for it.”

He encouraged them to remember that they are being prepared to be sent to communicate the newness of life in Christ to the world “to those families who are barely getting by, to young people in their 20s who pack their bags to look for work, to the elderly living alone, to the marginalized, and to those who have lost their sense of purpose.”

“The priest is sent to all people so that he may proclaim to all the beauty of faith in Jesus Christ, the good news of our salvation,” he said.

Pope Leo thanked the young men for their “yes” to God’s call, adding “your very presence in the seminary is a sign of hope for the entire Church.”

“As I look at each of you, I contemplate the wonder of God, who never tires of whispering to the hearts of young people the beauty of giving one’s life for him and for the Church,” the pope said.

(OSV News) – On Sept. 11, 2001 – the date of the worst terrorist attack in American history, when four hijacked jets became deadly weapons — there was no shortage of heroic first responders who confronted danger instead of avoiding it.

Many Catholic clergy and religious ministered among them – including priests, friars and sisters. Some of their stories are perhaps less well known – but the help and healing they also brought to those who experienced the devastating losses of 9/11 are worth remembrance as the 25th anniversary approaches.

“I remember like it was yesterday,” Father Brian Jordan told OSV News.

A Franciscan friar of his order’s Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the priest is the current pastor of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street in New York City.

That morning, Father Jordan was at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Hearing of the strike, he returned to the Franciscan friary on 31st Street — attached to St. Francis of Assisi Parish — where he lived, determined to go to the disaster site.

Uncertain what he might find — but expecting both victims and perpetrators — he retrieved holy water and a pair of brass knuckles. “I said, ‘I’ll bless them with one hand, and just in case there’s any bad guys, I’ll bless them with the other hand.”

Before he left, another friar had devastating news: Their fellow Franciscan, Father Mychal Judge, was dead. Still, Father Jordan knew what Father Judge would want him to do — go help.

After stopping at Manhattan’s St. Vincent’s Hospital — the only patients were those being treated for dust inhalation after the Twin Towers collapsed — Father Jordan headed to ground zero, encountering a police captain he knew.

“He gave me a mask; he gave me a pair of gloves. He said, ‘Father, put the mask on, put on the gloves and go to work.’ And so I went up and down for a couple blocks, and there were bodies and body parts. I just blessed them all.”

On Sept. 16, Father Jordan said his first Mass at ground zero; he would continue to have Mass there for nearly 10 months.

Then on Sept. 23, there was a surprise.

“A big burly construction worker from Local 731 comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Father, you want to see God’s house?'”

“So we go into the ruins of 6 World Trade Center,” recalled Father Jordan. “I had like 25 fighters next to me, and the construction worker says, ‘What do you see there, Father, right in the middle?’ I said, ‘I can’t believe this … I see a cross.'”

Two intersecting steel beams had been sheared into a crucifix, as 6 WTC was struck by debris from the collapse of the North Tower.

The stunning artifact became known as the “Cross at Ground Zero” and eventually became part of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum collection.

It was excavated, placed on a concrete abutment, and blessed. On Oct. 7, a Mass was celebrated near it, at the corner of Vesey and West streets.

“It gave a boost of energy to people at the time,” explained Father Jordan, who wrote his own memoir — “The Ground Zero Cross” (Xlibris) — and was given the distinction of being its unofficial guardian.

On 9/11, Sister Margaret O’ Brien, a Sister of Charity working in the Sisters of Charity Health Care System, was in her office at the Bayley Seton Hospital on Staten Island, briefing a colleague just returned from vacation.

“Her secretary came in and said, ‘I just got a call. A plane went into the World Trade Center,'” Sister Margaret remembered. “We went down the hall to a window we could see from, and we realized, this is going to be bad.”

The sisters quickly prepared to go to St. Vincent’s Hospital “to set up the emergency and trauma response,” explained Sister Margaret. “And the doctors were there, the stretchers were there, all waiting at the entrance — but after a short while, nobody came.”

Sister Margaret worked the hotline in the sisters’ hospital command center, taking calls from people searching for loved ones.

“The telephone was really hard,” she reflected. “Because people would give you a name and you’d check your list, and you didn’t have them. … It was very, very emotional the whole time — and for the first couple of days, the phone just kept ringing.”

Nonetheless, she found a reason to be thankful.

“I remember being so grateful I had something to be part of, to help,” said Sister Margaret, now assistant to the president of the Sisters of Charity New York.

Trauma was a persistent feature of the sisters’ shifts — especially for one colleague who assisted first responders sent for care from recovery work at ground zero.

“Sometimes people would talk, but most of the time they just couldn’t,” Sister O’Brien explained. Her colleague “remembered one person — he was very quiet — and then he said, ‘I can take the arms and the legs. But when I turned over a stone and saw a face, just a head, flattened into the ground.'”

“He lost it,” said Sister O’Brien.

Father Stephen McGraw — at the time a priest in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington — also saw unspeakable sights.

On the morning of 9/11, he had just concluded a school Mass — and was on his way to Arlington National Cemetery for a burial when he missed the appropriate exit.

“I remember about 9:35, I’m just sitting in this traffic, right in front of the Pentagon.”

He was distressed that he would now almost certainly be late for the burial.

“And then without warning, the plane came roaring right over the tops of our cars — very, very low,” Father McGraw said. “I can’t say which of my senses was most impacted — there was the vibration and roar of the plane, and a light pole was clipped and fell over on a taxi driver’s car just a few cars away.”

Looking to his right, he watched as American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon.

“I saw it crashing, disappearing, with a huge fireball billowing out from the building in the moment after the crash.”

Because his radio wasn’t on to hear what was happening in New York City, “I just assumed it was a terrible, tragic accident.”

Commuters came to a frozen stop, and Father McGraw leapt from his car — stole, anointing oils and prayer book in hand — vaulting the highway guardrail to the lawn of the Pentagon to reach the victims.

“Basically, my message to them was, ‘Jesus is with you.’ That’s what I kept saying to the several victims I attended,” said Father McGraw.

One victim who identified himself as Catholic — Juan Cruz, the civilian accounting division manager in the Office of the Administrative Assistant for the Secretary of the Army — was given the sacraments.

Another — Antoinette Sherman, an Army budget analyst, who later died — lay face down on the grass, severely burned on her back, a single shoe on one foot. Father McGraw gently removed it at her request.

“Then she just said, to perhaps whomever could hear her, ‘Tell my mother and father that I love them.’ And so I assured her that I would.”

Father McGraw — now a missionary priest and church pastor in the Diocese of Arlington’s Bánica Mission in the Dominican Republic — doesn’t think his unplanned detour was a coincidence.

“I had a strong sense of divine providence,” he told OSV News. “I was meant to be there.”

The attacks killed 2,977 people and injured thousands more: 2,753 people died in the Twin Towers collapse, brought down by two hijacked commercial airliners; 184 people died when a third hijacked airliner flew into the Pentagon; and 40 people died in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when passengers and crew fought back against hijackers on a fourth airliner, forcing it to crash in a field near Shanksville. Officials believe the fourth plane was headed for the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

The 25th anniversary of 9/11 will not only be a time of solemn remembrance — it also leaves some longing for the national unity Americans once demonstrated.

“We saw evil at its worst,” declared Father Jordan. “But we also saw goodness at its best. New York City came together. The country came together. The world came together.”

LAFLIN – Just 24 hours after fire forced the evacuation of Wyoming Area Catholic School in Exeter, its students, families, teachers, staff, and administrators gathered at Saint Maria Goretti Parish – not simply to pray – but to express gratitude.

The school community came together Wednesday morning, Sept. 2, 2026, grateful that every student and adult made it safely outside the building.

“This is step one, to come together before God, to come together as a school community to give thanks to one another and to be thankful for our safety,” Father Michael Drevitch, Pastor of Saint Maria Goretti Parish, said during his homily at the 11:00 a.m. Mass.

Throughout his homily, Father Drevitch returned to a theme he had shared with the students just two days earlier at their first school Mass of the year: Sometimes, God is found in the least expected places.

On Monday, he had encouraged students to recognize God’s presence not only in the Eucharist and the Word of God, but also through sports, academics, the arts, and other ordinary moments of school life.

“Then yesterday,” he said, “we came to recognize that God definitely presents himself in unexpected ways.”

Father Drevitch acknowledged the fire could be viewed as a disaster and a loss. Classrooms were damaged and books and supplies were lost.

But Father Drevitch urged the community to see something more.

“You can look at what happened yesterday as a disaster, as an emergency, as a loss,” he said. “Or you can look at it and recognize how God was present in our teachers and staff, how God was present in the first responders who literally put their lives at risk for our sake, and you can recognize how God was present in our children who stayed safe, brave, and listened to instructions and did what they were expected to do.”

Near the end of his homily, Father Drevitch, who teaches religion at Wyoming Area Catholic School, added a short example to emphasize how the situation had students reflecting God’s love.

“As students were dismissed, I saw some siblings come out, who sometimes would normally be fighting with one another, yesterday, they were holding hands and embracing one another. I saw it in a very beautiful way,” he said.

For Wyoming Area Catholic Principal Eileen Rishcoff, the sight of so many families gathered at Mass made her emotional.

“I am overwhelmed at the number of people that are here,” she told families and students before Mass.

Rishcoff reminded them that a school is about far more than books, supplies and belongings that were left behind when students evacuated.

“Sometimes things happen,” Rishcoff said. “But the most important thing is that we got out of the school safely.”

And they did so quickly.

Just after 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1, a teacher noticed that lights were flickering in the lower end of the school, near the younger grades.

When Amy Rosencrance, School Safety and Security Coordinator, went to investigate, she noticed smoke coming from the area.

“We quickly evacuated all of the kids from there and basically made sure that everyone got out of the building,” Rosencrance said. “At that moment, as I was checking to make sure everyone was safe and all of the kids were out, there were flames.”

The fire alarm was pulled, and students immediately began evacuating.

Seventh grader Victoria Sabetta had just finished math class when the fire alarm sounded.

“I was about to put my books away and all of a sudden we heard the fire alarm, so I dropped my books and I just went out,” Sabetta said.

It wasn’t until Sabetta was outside that she first saw smoke.

“It wasn’t until we got outside and the police officers started coming,” she added.

Ironically, the school had planned to conduct its first fire drill of the school year that same day. Instead, the students and staff found themselves responding to a real emergency.

“It was definitely well executed,” Rosencrance said while thanking first responders for their quick response. “I absolutely thank each and every one of them. Two police officers showed up immediately and we were inside the building together and they started to put out the fire. Within minutes, we had Exeter, West Pittson, Hughestown, Pittston city, Pittston Township, Kingston, every fire person was here. We had the Greater Pittston Ambulance and their response and how quickly they got here, I’m so thankful for that, because that really helped contain it and save this building.”

Students were transported to Wyoming Area High School, where they were reunited with their families.

The Pennsylvania State Police fire marshal is investigating the cause of the fire. School officials said there was considerable damage to at least two classrooms, with smoke and water damage affecting other portions of the building.

As school administrators face the work of beginning cleanup and restoration, students will be continuing their education at Saint Maria Goretti Parish in Laflin.

The parish has opened its religious education facilities, including classrooms and other spaces, to Wyoming Area Catholic School beginning Tuesday, Sept. 8, following Labor Day.

For Father Drevitch, the temporary relocation is itself an expression of what a parish is meant to be.

“A parish isn’t just a group of people who go to church,” he said. “A parish is a community who helps people when they need something. A parish is God’s hands at work as we take care of our children, as we keep them safe and provide them an education.”