The Ignatian response to September's terror

by David Nantais, SJ

A special liturgy at Boston College held just hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was mirrored at other Jesuit schools across the country. The schools were quick to organize blood drives, inter-faith prayer services, and fundraisers, collecting tens of thousands of dollars for needs they knew would be great.

FR. STEVE KATSOUROS, SJ, was on the subway commuting to his job at St. Peter's Prep in Jersey City from his Jesuit community on 83rd Street in New York when the first plane hit.

His train halted abruptly at Fulton Street, just two blocks from the World Trade Center. He emerged from below into a catastrophic situation unlike any New York has ever experienced.

Although a bit disoriented, he pulled aside a police officer and immediately offered his assistance. She and Steve were standing at the concourse entrance of the WTC as a sea of people evacuated the building. The pandemonium grew. The officer told him, "Get outta here, Father."

Minutes later the first tower fell. Steve found himself running down Broadway. A gigantic cloud of dust aggressively progressed down the street toward him. Steve managed to evade the debris and find safety. He does not know what happened to the officer who warned him to leave the WTC.

Steve made his way to the emergency room of Bellevue Hospital in lower Manhattan to offer help and was greeted by dozens of gasping firefighters and rescue workers who had been laboring at the site soon to be dubbed Ground Zero. Steve spent hours in the ER listening and counseling, trying to provide a pastoral presence to people who had witnessed the hellish scene.

This work has continued, now weeks after the attack. Since September 11, Steve and his Jesuit brothers have buried alumni and parents of students from St. Peter's Prep and have counseled dozens of those now mourning these terrible losses.

"Our regular jobs are on hold," he says. "I'm trying to be available to people as much as possible."

"No one can give a rational interpretation of these events. All of us have confronted the fragility of human life," said Creighton University president Fr. John Schlegel, SJ, who pauses at a campuswide prayer service held on September 14.

Fr. John Dear, SJ, longtime advocate for peace and social justice, left the Jesuit community on 98th and Broadway one hour after the attacks to offer help. He has since counseled hundreds of grieving family members who lost loved ones. He too has put his "day job" as a writer on hold and is working at Ground Zero full time as one of three coordinators for over 800 chaplains of various faiths who are working with families, police, and firefighters. It is not easy. "All I can do is stand with people in their grief and listen to them, and hold them, and pray with them and weep with them and bless them."

Dear, like his brother Jesuits who have devoted their time and energies for the relief efforts, does find a glimmer of the sacred in this work. "I feel really blessed as a Jesuit and a priest to be able to help."

Students and staff at St. Peter's College, across the Hudson River from Manhattan in Jersey City, also made themselves available immediately after the attacks. The college received a call for help from the Jersey City Police Department. Dave Bryngil, director of recreation at St. Peter's and an alumnus of the school, was one of the first to respond. He and a crew of St. Peter's students headed down to the river to load up boats headed to Manhattan with water, food, and over 8,000 pounds of ice, the latter in anticipation of corpses everyone expected to find.

Once that job was complete, rescue workers asked the St. Peter's group to go over to Manhattan to help unload. They did not hesitate.

"I wanted to get over there and give them a hand where they needed it," Bryngil recounts. The group from St. Peter's labored at Ground Zero in the twisted, smoldering steel and dust for hours, finally returning to Jersey City on the last boat of the night.

People drew together for solace at a mass at St. Aloysius Church in Spokane.

Students at the University of San Francisco pledge their support for "I will not raise a hand," their refusal to support any violent reaction to the attacks.

For days after the attack, dozens of students and staff went down to the river to help with relief efforts. Among them was student Jamie Kaufsman. " I had to do something," says Jamie. "I couldn't sit around and watch the news." Jamie and his classmates continued to help at every available moment for days after the catastrophe. Reflecting on these experiences, Bryngil said, "I've never seen our students so focused. It was a very proud moment."

Fred Cranwell, director of communications at St. Peter's, concurred. "Our students took cura personalis to a higher level."

Fordham University, a part of New York for 160 years, mourned with its beloved city on September 11, coming together for a mass that day celebrated by Cardinal Avery Dulles.

"Members of the Fordham community were anxious for an opportunity to be with one another during this very difficult time," said Fr. Gerald Blaszczak, SJ, university chaplain. Social work faculty wasted no time offering counseling assistance to those traumatized by the attacks. "We were out there the first day because the sooner people talk, the better it is for them," said Dr. John Cosgrove, associate dean of the graduate school of social service.

Many other Jesuits and their colleagues in the New York area heard the call to assist those involved with rescue efforts, and they responded with incredible compassion. "It was a week when you saw the worst and the best of humanity," remembers Fr. Vince Sullivan, SJ, rector of the Jesuit community at St. Peter's Prep, whose students were among the throngs of volunteers who came down to load the boats. They also converted their cafeteria into a temporary shelter for over a dozen people who had to evacuate their downtown apartments.

New York's Regis High and Xavier High, which both lost alumni in the attacks, immediately organized prayer services that attracted over 1,000 people each. Regis High decided to cancel its largest social event of the year, which was to be held late in September at the World Trade Center, and donated $25,000 to the local firehouse, Catholic Charities, and the Jesuit Refugee Service.

The days immediately following the attacks were hectic and frightening. Nevertheless, the people volunteering in lower Manhattan focused on a common goal. "I've never really experienced the Holy Spirit as powerfully as down there at Ground Zero," said Fr. Jim Martin, SJ, associate editor at America magazine. Fr. Martin, along with Fr. Bob Reiser, SJ, vocations director of the New York and Maryland provinces, and three Jesuit scholastics studying at Fordham, Andrew Wawrzyn, Phillip Ganir, and Pawel Adamczyk, organized a mass for workers at Ground Zero just two days after the attacks. Being able to minister with his brother Jesuits was what helped Fr. Martin look beyond the death and destruction to see signs of God at such a horrific place.

University of Scranton students attended a candlelight vigil, an event repeated on many campuses in the country.

Prayer services, vigils, fundraisers-students at Jesuit high schools across the country, including Tom Davis and Andrew Stevens at St. John's Jesuit High School in Toledo, responded to the attacks in many heartfelt ways.

Many from St. Peter's College and Prep in Jersey City, just across the Hudson from lower Manhattan, witnessed the attacks and the aftermath as they happened. Students from the schools helped load boats with water and food for rescuers and tons of ice, destined for a makeshift morgue across the water.

Hundreds of miles away in Washington D.C., Fr. John Quinn, SJ, publications manager for the Jesuit Conference, also felt the presence of God in the midst of a heartbreaking catastrophe.

Quinn, a former marine, was particularly affected by the terrorist strike on the Pentagon. Early in the morning on September 12, he packed some consecrated hosts and rode his bike down to the crash site to offer assistance. Fr. Quinn spent the day hearing confessions, distributing communion, and providing a kind and encouraging presence for rescue workers. The sight of massive devastation inflicted upon such a powerful symbol of the United States was overwhelming to Fr. Quinn, but equally so was the charity he witnessed on the part of those working around him. "I saw an incredible outpouring of generosity and human kindness on the part of the Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers," he wrote.

On September 13, just miles away from the Pentagon, Georgetown University organized a prayer service on campus to pray for the many who lost their lives. In attendance were Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and D.C. mayor Anthony Williams, along with other religious leaders from Washington. The university community felt it was especially important during this time to focus on what unites people of different faiths. Georgetown president John DeGioia told the congregation, "In these moments of tragedy, we recognize the urgent need to know each other."

Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., hosted an interfaith prayer service attended by Rev. Jane Dixon, Washington's Episcopal bishop; Fr. Adam Bunnell, OMF Conv., Georgetown chaplain; and Rajwant Singh, DDS, executive director of the Guru Gobind Singh (Sikh) Foundation.

Throughout the United States, people at Jesuit institutions felt compelled to aid their brothers and sisters in New York and Washington D.C. Students, faculty, staff, and parishioners donated hundreds of pints of blood and tens of thousands of dollars to aid relief efforts. Jesuits and their companions turned to the ministry of spiritual care, especially at the schools where faculty, alumni, and friends were lost. Prayer services at Scranton, Marquette, Rockhurst, Fairfield and Gonzaga universities drew thousands of students, faculty, and alumni together to offer prayers for the victims of 9/11. Seniors Kathleen Brooks and Kristina Pereira Tully organized over 300 of their fellow students at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco and solemnly processed over four miles to St. Ignatius Church at the University of San Francisco, where 500 students and friends met them to pray for peace.

Works of mercy at several Jesuit schools around the nation bolstered the many prayers that were offered. Students at Chicago's Cristo Rey High and other Jesuit high schools across the country wrote letters of support to Catholic school students in New York. The University of Detroit Mercy housed commuter students and faculty from Canada who would have faced hours of waiting at the border in the weeks following the attacks. Boston College formed a Drop-In Support Center for anyone looking for missing loved ones. A parent of a student at Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma made and sold patriotic T-shirts, donating proceeds to the Red Cross. Thanks to a kind benefactor, Jesuit College Prep in Dallas distributed over 700 U.S. flags at a home football game.

Many more pages could be written describing the benevolent responses of Jesuits, students, faculty, parishioners and alums after the United States faced one of the darkest days in its history.

Men and Women for Others. We say this so often that it can seem trite. But it was anything but following September 11. At Jesuit institutions all over the country love definitely showed itself as deeds. Whether working in the midst of the horror of Ground Zero, showing up to donate blood In Kansas City, or lighting a candle at a prayer vigil in Chicago, the true heart of Ignatius's words were witnessed and felt.

David Nantais, SJ, is the university minister for the College of Engineering and Science at the University of Detroit Mercy. Prior to entering the Jesuits he worked as a research assistant in the department of biochemistry at Iowa State.