Saturday, April 25, 2009

Archbishop Timothy Dolan paid his first visit to the World Trade Center site




NEW YORK - The city's new archbishop knelt in prayer at ground zero Friday and said he felt "overwhelming sadness" at the site of the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan paid his first visit to the World Trade Center site and celebrated Mass at a church that once served as a staging area for emergency responders after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

He spent about 15 minutes at a street-level platform overlooking the Sept. 11 memorial under construction, talking briefly with chairman Anthony Coscia and executive director Chris Ward of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Dolan then knelt and said a prayer, the same one Pope Benedict XVI gave during an April 2008 visit to the World Trade Center, where he also lighted a memorial candle and blessed the site with holy water.