Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Catholic bishops across the United States are urging the faithful not only to remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost, but to confront the anniversary through prayer, mercy, courage and a renewed commitment to peace.
Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York reflected on the enduring signs of that day throughout the city, according to EWTN News.
“Twenty-five years later, its memory lives on; in a new skyline, in simple plaques and great memorials, and in the photographs of first responders who were lost, still displayed outside of firehouses and police stations,” Hicks said.
“We remember those who died and the extraordinary courage, service, sacrifice, and compassion that followed,” he added.
Hicks will celebrate an invitation-only Vigil Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sept. 10 for those affected by the attacks. The Mass will also be livestreamed.
The Archdiocese of New York also recalled the words of the late Cardinal Edward Egan, who served as archbishop of New York when the attacks occurred.
“We will not pretend that words can deal with this adequately. The healing will take time, as it always does,” Egan said. “Still, we insist that the extraordinary goodness of our people has marched alongside the pain and the hurt.”
That goodness was also remembered by Bishop John Bonnici of Rochester, who was serving as a priest in New York at the time.
“Amidst the tragedy, the sadness and the grief, there was this real genuine kindness and fraternal love in the city of New York of all places,” Bonnici said, according to EWTN News.
“The Lord was able to use people to reach out to others and allow for the healing that was so necessary,” he said.
In Washington, D.C., Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, will celebrate Mass on Sept. 11 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
According to the basilica, the Mass will “honor the brave first responders and members of our Armed Forces who answered the nation’s call in its aftermath, and entrust to the mercy of God all affected by that tragic day.”
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, similarly called Catholics to prayer for those killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania.
“In a special way, we lovingly embrace in prayer the victims’ families and friends, who still mourn the irretrievable loss of their loved ones on that day,” Coakley said.
He also remembered the first responders and emergency personnel, “so many who gave their lives in selfless acts of courage.”
Coakley recalled how Americans turned toward God amid the fear and uncertainty that followed the attacks.
“Our faith lifted us up and sustained us,” he said.
Looking beyond the anniversary, Coakley urged Catholics to consider how the lessons of Sept. 11 should shape their response to a world still scarred by violence.
“As conflicts intensify around the world, let us renew our commitment to be Christ’s instruments of peace in an increasingly fractured and divided world,” he said.
For Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, the anniversary also carries deeply personal memories. Lori was bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, when the attacks occurred and quickly realized that many Catholics in his diocese worked at the World Trade Center.
“Driven by an urgent need to be with my flock, I arranged to offer Mass at St. Augustine Cathedral in Bridgeport,” Lori recalled, according to EWTN News.
He later went to train stations to meet commuters returning from New York and visited hospitals searching for survivors.
“What followed was a relentless, agonizing search through the rubble,” Lori said. “As names were identified, the agonizing weeks of funerals began. I sat with spouses, children and parents trying to make sense of the unimaginable.”
Lori said nearly 3,000 people were killed, including 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers and 55 military personnel. Thousands of responders later suffered illnesses connected to their recovery work at Ground Zero.
“To truly honor those we lost and the legendary courage of our first responders, we must never forget,” Lori said. “Let no one believe that terrorism or violence can ever resolve injustice.”
Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport focused his reflection on what the families and communities affected by Sept. 11 have taught him during the quarter-century since the attacks.
“Twenty-five years is long enough for a wound to close into a scar, and long enough for a generation to grow up knowing that morning only as a chapter in a textbook. It is not nearly long enough for the families I serve,” Caggiano said.
“In Fairfield County the loss has never been abstract. Our trains carried neighbors into those towers, and that evening they came back with empty seats,” he added.
Among the lessons Caggiano identified were that resilience does not simply mean moving on and that fear cannot be permitted to control people. But he described another lesson as particularly difficult: mercy.
“It is not forgetting, excusing, or indifference to justice. Justice without mercy becomes vengeance, and mercy without justice becomes indulgence,” Caggiano said. “Forgiveness begins with a full acknowledgment of the wound and then refuses to let that wound dictate the rest of a life.”
“It is not a feeling that arrives one morning but a deliberate decision, sometimes one that must be made again and again over years,” he said.
The Ukrainian Catholic Bishops of the United States also challenged Christians to consider what the tragedy means a generation later.
“What is the legacy of September 11? What have we learned? What can that terrible day teach us today?” the bishops asked in a pastoral letter, according to EWTN News.
They warned that the attacks revealed “the terrible reality of the capacity of fallen humanity for evil,” particularly when hatred causes people to stop seeing another human being as a child of God.
Yet Sept. 11 also demonstrated what the bishops described as an even greater human capacity for “goodness, courage, compassion, sacrifice and love.”
“We saw strangers helping strangers. We saw firefighters climbing stairways toward almost certain death. We saw ordinary people performing extraordinary acts of courage. We saw communities opening their doors, people donating blood, churches filling with worshippers, and a nation and the entire world coming together in grief and solidarity,” they wrote.
For Catholics, the bishops suggested, remembering Sept. 11 cannot end with recalling the horror of what happened. The anniversary is also an invitation to choose how Christians respond to hatred, division and suffering today.
“Even in the midst of tragedy, God gives us opportunities to become instruments of His love,” the Ukrainian Catholic bishops said.
They concluded their message with St. Paul’s enduring command: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
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