by Frank DeRosa
A little more than 48 hours after the devastation of 9/11, Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn walked amid the rubble of ground zero, past twisted metal, overturned vehicles, and other debris, with a white face mask covering his mouth as protection against the fetid air from the ash still swirling about.
Msgr. John Delendick, the beloved and now deceased FDNY chaplain, had suggested a visit to the site following a Sept. 13 meeting in Manhattan of the city’s religious leaders called by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He was planning a memorial service at Yankee Stadium.
“Would you like to see the workers there at the pile?” Msgr. Delendick asked the bishop, referring to the crews attempting to gently recover bodies and body fragments and to clear the area of what had been known as the World Trade Center.
“I can get through the streets leading up to it because of the fire department lights and siren on my car. Others can’t.”
The answer was a quick yes.
Bishop Daily, accompanied by his priest secretary, Msgr. Ralph Maresca, and Msgr. Delendick, stepped in among the firefighters, first responders, and volunteers in a scene that prompted unexpected smiles of recognition in the dim environment.
It was almost as if the bishop were making a pastoral visit to a parish in Brooklyn and Queens. “Hi, bishop,” greeted one worker. “I saw you when you did a confirmation in our parish.” Another said, “Bishop, you came to our parish, and I saw you there.”
Others chimed in. There were not only words. There were hugs.
The Church is at its best when it is a Church of consolation. Bishop Daily was there to console.
In the days that followed, clergy from throughout the metropolitan area, and notably from the Diocese of Brooklyn, spent hours supporting and counseling the workers in their painstaking and sensitive work at ground zero.
Msgr. John Brown, who was the diocese’s director of clergy personnel, took the time to make many trips there. He comes to mind, but there were others.
With so many of the 343 firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11 coming from Brooklyn and Queens, and with countless lay faithful from there among the innocent victims, churches ministered to heartbroken families at numerous Masses of Christian Burial.
Not to single out just one, but Msgr. Martin Geraghty, the respected and popular pastor at St. Francis de Sales Church in Belle Harbor, may have had the most.
On the day after 9/11, Pope John Paul II said: “I entrust to the mercy of our Most High the helpless victims of this tragedy. … May God give courage to the survivors.
“May he sustain the rescue workers and the many volunteers who are presently making an enormous effort to cope with such an intense tragedy. … Join me in praying for them.”
Twenty-five years later, the words of the late pontiff, now St. John Paul II, are worth recalling.
Frank DeRosa, the retired director of the former diocesan Public Information Office, was with Bishop Daily at ground zero.