CNS STORY: Maryknoller who ministered at ground zero recalls horrors of Sept. 11

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SEPT11-NOBILETTI Sep-5-2007 (850 words) With photos posted Sept. 5, 2003, and May 18, 2007. xxxn

Maryknoller who ministered at ground zero recalls horrors of Sept. 11

By Beth Griffin
Catholic News Service

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."

When the brown-gray dust cleared enough for him to get to his feet, Father Nobiletti said, his ears and nose were clogged and he had cuts on his face. "People were crying and screaming. A policeman lying in the street yelled to us to get out of where we were." The warning was timely, because as Father Nobiletti made it around to the other side of St. Paul's chapel, the north tower collapsed.

Father Nobiletti said that as he walked back to his parish, not knowing what to expect there, a man he knew doused him with water from an office water cooler. "It was a thoughtful gesture," said Father Nobiletti with a smile, "but it turned all the dust into something like cement."

When he arrived at Transfiguration, the students being evacuated from the parish school looked at him with horror and did not recognize him.

Father Nobiletti went to the rectory, which occupies the top floor of the school. He assumed that his two priest colleagues had perished and he was dreading having to let their religious superiors know that they were lost. Instead, he found them drinking coffee.

They had been diverted to another street near ground zero and then evacuated before they were able to minister to anyone. Father Nobiletti and his staff then opened the doors of Transfiguration and sat outside talking and listening to the people who came by.

Of his experiences that day, Father Nobiletti said, "It was a real privilege to be there and a great affirmation for the priesthood." Months later, when a badly burned survivor returned home from rehabilitation, she gave an interview crediting "the priest who prayed over me" and the medical personnel for saving her life. Reporters identified him from pictures taken on Sept. 11.

"And then all kinds of people started calling," he said. Some thanked him; others asked if he had seen their sons or daughters. "They were looking for closure. It was very touching and very sad."

On the day of the terrorist attacks, there were 19 Transfiguration parishioners missing, but ultimately, there were three fatalities, including one firefighter.

"So many of the people in the neighborhood were new immigrants, working at menial jobs in and around the World Trade Center," said Father Nobiletti. "Some of our people were ferried to New Jersey on the boats that were used to evacuate Lower Manhattan. They didn't speak English, their cell phones didn't work and it took them awhile to get back."

Father Nobiletti, a native New Yorker, speaks Cantonese and has worked to make his parish an inclusive one. He calls Sept. 11 "one of those peaks, a moment of which there are a handful, in which the parish came through to serve the whole community."

Each year on Sept. 11, the parish hosts an ecumenical service. This year, Father Nobiletti, a Buddhist monk and an Episcopal priest will lead an interfaith community memorial service described as "coming together for the fallen, for those still suffering and for the community."

END

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