Pope Benedict XVI paid a solemn visit to the site of the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York before celebrating a huge mass at Yankee Stadium to close a historic US visit.The pope pleaded for an end to sectarian hatreds as he prayed Sunday at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers stood before hijackers rammed passenger planes into the skyscrapers, killing nearly 3,000 people.
"We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here," Benedict beseeched God after blessing the ground in all four directions. "Heal the pain of still-grieving families."
"Bring peace to our violent world ... turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred," he said.
The pope had arrived at the former World Trade Center site in his white Mercedes-Benz popemobile, which drove slowly down a ramp that straddles the hole in the ground where the twin skyscrapers used to stand.
He descended some three-quarters of the way down the ramp and walked the final few meters (yards) to kneel in silent prayer.
Then, as a blustery wind blew, he lit a white candle within a glass tube, before intoning his prayer and blessing the ground.
As a solo cellist played, Benedict spoke to 24 survivors and relatives of those who perished in the attacks by Al-Qaeda hijackers.
Tom Riches, who carried his firefighter brother's body out of the site, had returned to be there with Benedict.
"Since that day, it's always been sacred to me," Riches told the Sun Sentinel newspaper. "Him blessing the ground there will make it official."
They found the remains of Firefighter Jimmy Riches in the rubble of the World Trade Center on March 25, 2002. A brother, Tom Riches, then just 17, walked down into the pit, and he and his father and his other two brothers carried Jimmy out on a stretcher.
On Sunday morning, six years later, Tom Riches walked once again into the hole. There, about 10 yards from where they found Jimmy that day, he met Pope Benedict XVI. The pope visited the site on the last day of his six-day visit to the United States, to bless the ground that Tom Riches had long considered sacred.
Tom Riches said it was always hard going back to ground zero. Sunday morning was no different. “I was a little emotional at first, and then when he came down, it got very calm and peaceful,” he said of the pope’s arrival.
Countless prayers and blessings have been uttered at the place where two 110-story towers once stood. But Sunday, on a foggy, chilly spring morning, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church stepped onto the bedrock where 2,750 people were killed, adding his own prayers, sprinkling holy water and meeting 24 rescue workers, survivors and relatives of 9/11 victims.
Tom Riches and the other guests were introduced individually to the pope by Cardinal Edward M. Egan, head of the New York archdiocese. Tom Riches knelt before the pope, kissed his ring and spoke briefly to him.
“I told him to bless my brother’s memory and my family, and I thanked him for coming down there,” Tom Riches said. “He said, ‘God bless you.’ ”
In his coat pocket, Tom Riches carried the Mass card from his brother’s funeral. On one side is a picture of a smiling Jimmy; on the other side is a passage of poetry that reads, in part: “Grieve not ... nor speak of me with tears ... but laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you.” The funeral was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where the pope celebrated Mass on Saturday morning.
Jimmy’s father, James J. Riches, 57, a veteran firefighter who retired last year as a deputy chief, watched the ceremony on Sunday from the top of the hole at ground zero. He watched the pope walk on the same ramp near West and Liberty Streets that he and his sons had walked carrying Jimmy’s body. One of Tom Riches’s friends had submitted his name to the archdiocese, and of more than 1,100 people whose names were sent in, he was one of 24 selected to attend the service.
“It’s not the lottery you want to be in,” James Riches said. “We don’t want to be in this lottery, but fate has it that way.”
Jimmy was a free spirit, a bartender turned crime fighter turned firefighter. He was a New York City police officer before joining the Fire Department in 1999.
“What was the saying we said at his funeral? It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years,” James Riches said. “And he packed 100 years into 29 years.”
The three younger boys had looked up to Jimmy, especially Tom, the youngest. It was Jimmy who was Tom’s godfather. It was Jimmy who, when they found his remains in what used to be the lobby of the north tower, was found next to a woman who was on a stretcher when she died.
“He was that kind of kid,” James Riches said. “He helped the underdog. He wouldn’t leave somebody behind.”
Jimmy would have turned 30 on Sept. 12, 2001. Part of the street in Brooklyn where James Riches and the boys’ mother, Rita, live and where Jimmy grew up — Bay Eighth Street, in Dyker Heights — was renamed Firefighter Jimmy Riches Way. The high school and the college Jimmy attended — Xavier High School in Manhattan and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina — have scholarships in Jimmy’s name.
By Sunday afternoon, the significance of Tom Riches’s meeting with the pope had not yet sunk in. He and his father rushed from interview to interview. His cellphone kept ringing. “I need time to think about it, you know,” he said.
For his father, the pope’s visit reaffirmed the spirituality and the divinity of a place that these days looks more like a crane-crowded construction site than the ruin of Sept. 11, 2001. “We knew that Jimmy died there, and that’s where he breathed his last breath,” James Riches said. “That’s where his soul left his body, and it means a lot to us.”
One of Tom Riches’s brothers, Danny, is a firefighter who works out of Jimmy’s firehouse, in Ladder 114 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Danny has Jimmy’s old locker. Tom Riches’s other brother, Timothy, is a firefighter in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Tom Riches is also a firefighter, like his father and his brother Jimmy before him.
Some victims' relatives had hoped the pope would specifically bless the hundreds of people killed at ground zero whose remains were never identified.They also wanted him to pray for the removal and burial of any remains that may have been taken to the Fresh Kills garbage dump on Staten Island.The pope's prayers weren't that specific, however, disappointing some of the victims' relatives.Rosemary Cain, whose firefighter son George perished on Sept. 11, 2001, wanted Benedict to address the desire of some families to keep searching for remains at both ground zero and the dump so they can be buried properly."Nothing about Fresh Kills was addressed. Nothing about the inhumanity to the remains was addressed," she said. "I know the souls will not rest peacefully until they are buried with respect and dignity."The World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial sued the city in 2005, claiming that officials rushed the cleanup at ground zero and failed to deliver on a promise to sift debris taken to the dump to find body parts, remains and personal belongings. More than 1,700 bone fragments have been recovered in just the past two years in and around ground zero.While Cain was appreciative of the pope's visit, she also was saddened at not being able to attend in person. "It broke my heart not to be there," she said.
He greeted survivors, fire and police workers, and relatives of some of the 2,749 people who died there.
The Pope prayed for the rescuers and victims, as well as "those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred".
He later celebrated Mass at New York's Yankee stadium, concluding what analysts describe as a successful trip.
His visit has dominated the American media, and demand for the 55,000 tickets for Sunday's Mass far outstripped supply, reported the BBC's David Willey in New York.
Candour
There was a party atmosphere among the tens of thousands gathered at the Yankee Stadium, with clergy and lay members of the Church alike taking part in the Mexican waves which rippled through the crowd ahead of the pontiff's arrival.
Congregants stood and clapped as the song Lean on Me was performed by guitarist Jose Feliciano on the white, purple and yellow platform in the middle of the baseball pitch.
As the Pope arrived the crowds cheered and waved yellow and white handkerchiefs, the official papal colours.
He requested "eternal light and peace" for those who died, not only in New York but at the Pentagon in Washington DC and in a Pennsylvania field on 11 September 2001.
"God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world," he said. "Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred."
The Pope then met 24 people with ties to the tragedy, exchanging a few words with each.
With a candour that correspondents say has been a hallmark of this visit, he spoke publicly for the first time about being forced to join the Hitler Youth and being conscripted into the Nazi army.
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