BAY RIDGE — Angela DiLalla has visited different 9/11 memorials around New York City over the years, but said that because of her Catholic faith, she has always been eager to see monuments that churches built in tribute to the victims.
That’s why, DiLalla said, she participated in a pilgrimage organized by The Tablet to visit, reflect, and pray at different sites throughout Bay Ridge on Sept. 9.
“A lot of memorials are beautiful, but secular. I think it’s really important that we do this in the context of our faith,” DiLalla said. “I think it was very important to be part of this so that I can memorialize the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in the context of prayer.”
The idea for “Walking in Remembrance: 25 Years Later, A Pilgrimage of Prayer, Hope & Healing” came from a desire to bring together the stories of Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens who were lost on 9/11, according to Michelle Powers, news director of The Tablet.
“We knew there were so many churches, schools, and families in Brooklyn and Queens who had been impacted,” Powers said, and we wanted to bring those stories together in a way that was meaningful — not just through reporting, but through prayer and walking alongside our community.”
The pilgrimage included stops at three Catholic churches — St. Patrick’s, St. Ephrem, and Our Lady of Angels — as well as Xaverian High School, all of which lost parishioners and alumni on 9/11. It concluded at the American Veterans Pier, a spot that offers a view of the World Trade Center across New York Harbor in Lower Manhattan.
Father Joseph Fonti, pastor of the Church of St. Mel in Flushing, was the pilgrimage’s spiritual guide and led the group in prayer at each stop.
“This is a reverent walk,” he said. “It’s clergy, it’s laity, being together, to solemnly keep a vigil walk, a vigil watch with our brothers and sisters, both those who have gone before us, and those who are still suffering the effects of 9/11.”
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At the first stop, St. Patrick’s Church, participants saw a 100-year-old monstrance that the church redesigned to pay tribute to the 15 parishioners and residents lost on 9/11.
“It actually stands 37 inches in height so that everyone can see its magnificence from anywhere in the church,” explained Jessica Easthope, senior digital reporter for The Tablet, who guided the pilgrimage with Christine Persichette, anchor of The Tablet’s new weekly show “Sunday in the City.”
At the second stop, participants visited St. Ephrem Church’s Garden of Hope, which contains a statue of Jesus Christ cradling the twin towers in his arms. Plaques bearing the names of parishioners who died on 9/11 are displayed with the statue.
A section of steel from the World Trade Center stands in the courtyard of Our Lady of Angels Church, the third stop. The steel, which resembles a cross, is bookended by a statue of the Blessed Mother on one side and a plaque containing the names of 19 parishioners and community residents who died on 9/11 on the other.
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Xaverian High School, the fourth stop on the pilgrimage, lost 23 alumni on 9/11. Their names are listed on a monument on the school’s front lawn, the centerpiece of which is an eternal flame backed by a section of steel recovered from ground zero.
“We’re standing in front of a Catholic school where all of the kids who walk the halls here were born after 9/11. So, it’s our responsibility, the parents, the teachers, to tell them the story of what happened,” Persichette said.
The final stop was the American Veterans Pier, where, as Tablet Editor Emeritus Ed Wilkinson explained, hundreds of people flocked on 9/11 to see the devastation unfolding in Lower Manhattan.
