Ministering at Ground Zero

NEW YORK (CNS) — Six years later, the sound of fire engines brings Maryknoll Father Raymond Nobiletti back to ground zero. “Whenever I hear them, I have to stop and remind myself where I am,” he said.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Father Nobiletti answered an urgent call for priests from St. Andrew’s Parish near the World Trade Center. He and two other priests from Transfiguration Parish in New York’s Chinatown grabbed their stoles and holy oils and made their way through the sea of horrified people fleeing north.

“The second plane had hit and it was clear that this was not an accident,” he recalled. “We were bumping the shoulders of the people running the other way.”

At the scene, the priests were sent in different directions. Father Nobiletti was stationed near an ambulance in front of the Millennium Hotel, where people from the north tower of the World Trade Center were being evacuated. “It was a horror,” he said. “People were coming out burned, screaming and disoriented.

“I was a magnet. People were grabbing me and crying and asking me to help them contact their loved ones,” Father Nobiletti said. As he knelt over the injured, he said, “there were chunks of stuff coming down all around us. I’m glad I didn’t look up.”

If he had, he might have seen the news photographers capturing both the chaos and his comforting presence in photos that were beamed around the world.

He did look up when he heard the roar made by the collapse of the south tower. “I ran and held onto the gate at the cemetery of St. Paul’s chapel. I thought it was going to be the last thing I was ever going to see. Two people were holding onto my thighs to keep from getting swept away,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe. Everything was dark for eight to ten minutes.”

From CNS 

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