On one of my first visits to New York City to teach journalism — I spent 8-10 weeks a year in lower Manhattan — I went to the window of my room high in a long-stay hotel.
I was looking straight down on the construction project to rebuild St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the tiny sanctuary that was crushed by the 9/11 collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center. It hit me at that moment that, at some point, my “neighborhood” Orthodox parish would be the shrine at Ground Zero.
I walked past that construction project for five years, including several years in which the work was stalled by a complex mix of mismanagement, exploding costs and, some would say, fraud. The sanctuary still isn’t finished, but it’s getting closer.
Let me stress — I was not in New York City on 9/11. I was, however, in West Palm Beach, surrounded by New Yorkers in the heart of the Seinfeldian “sixth borough” of South Florida. My family attended an Orthodox parish in which 80% of the members were Arab Christians of various kinds. My Palm Beach Atlantic University office was next to the Trump Plaza towers, the mini-World Trade Center used as a symbolic target during the training flights of Mohamed Atta and other 9/11 terrorists who spent time in South Florida.
My first 9/11-related national column was about the destruction of St. Nicholas Orthodox parish, build on an interview with its priest, Father John Romas. As an Orthodox believer, I was immediately struck by these details:
The members of St. Nicholas do not think that any parishioners died when the towers, a mere 250 feet away, fell onto their small sanctuary in an avalanche of concrete, glass, steel and fire.
Nevertheless, the Orthodox believers want to search in the two-story mound of debris for the remains of three loved ones who died long ago — the relics of St. Nicholas, St. Katherine and St. Sava. Small pieces of their skeletons were kept in a gold-plated box marked with an image of Christ. This ossuary was stored in a 700-pound, fireproof safe.
The safe containing the ossuary vanished. To the non-Orthodox, the loss of these relics may seem like an insignificant detail. But to Christians in churches with ancient roots, they are more than symbolic. The new St. Nicholas will not be complete until the saint — a relic of St. Nicholas of Myra —returns to the altar.
I bring this up because of a fine Associated Press piece, by veteran religion-beat pro Peter Smith, that ran the other day with this headline: “Shrine to replace church destroyed on 9/11 nears completion.” You need to read it all and, trust me, I think it’s a compliment that I think there were only a few crucial (for me) details missing.
The long, long story of the St. Nicholas project is unbelievably complex and, in addition to all the sacred details, there were years of legal battles over how to find land for the shrine in the midst of the larger Ground Zero rebuild projects. Then there were the investigations — ongoing? — into the finances of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy. Here is a long, essential, chunk of the AP piece:
The old St. Nicholas church was also destroyed. ... While no one was killed in the building, it was crushed beneath the falling south tower — the only house of worship destroyed in the attacks.
“When we discovered ... that St. Nicholas was also lost, we thought that there was some kind of a message there, that the victims did not die alone,” Anthoula Katsimatides said. “I remember my mom saying that ... John and the other victims were being cradled by St. Nicholas.”
This Sept. 10, the eve of the date 20 years after the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack, she’ll attend the ceremonial lighting of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, being built to replace the parish church and to honor those who were lost.
The ceremony will be a milestone in a project long beset with bureaucratic tangles and financial woes but now on track for completion next year.
Please understand that “cradled by St. Nicholas” is not, for the Orthodox, a reference to the building or even to the parish. This Orthodox believer is talking about a saint in the heavenly Body of Christ.
That’s a big reason that the sacramental details of the rebuild project deserve coverage — if news stories are going to include material linked to the believers who will be worshipping at that altar for years to come.
Also, from the church’s point of view, the events of 9/11 produced new “relics,” especially an icon and pieces of icons, that did survive the destruction of the sanctuary. Here are some details from an “On Religion” column I wrote in 2014:
The canvas icon is mounted on a wooden board that has been broken and crushed to the point that the ripped icon is all that is holding it together, said Father Evagoras Constantinides, a member of the archdiocese team on this project. It will be placed, with other objects found at the site, somewhere in the new shrine. …
"We do have some relics, you might say, from the original church," said Constantinides. "We know this place, this shrine, will become a destination point for pilgrims from all over the Orthodox world. But we also know that this is not a Greek thing. This is not just an Orthodox thing. This is for everyone."
When it's time to consecrate the church, he added, its leaders will focus on one final symbolic detail. The safe that vanished contained a gold-plated ossuary holding small bones from three saints — including St. Nicholas of Myra, the 4th century saint who is the patron saint of orphans, merchants, sailors and all those in distress.
"That is the time when we can reach out to other churches" around the world dedicated to St. Nicholas, he said. "That is when we will try to find a way to replace what was lost and bring St. Nicholas home again."
Before some readers post a comment saying “you only care about those details because you are Orthodox,” let me say that I see the point of that criticism.
At the same time, we are talking about the rebuilding of an Orthodox sanctuary and, in some sense, the healing of a community of Orthodox believers. Orthodox sanctuaries are not complete and ready to be dedicated for worship without these kinds of details falling into place. This is a matter of church Tradition, with a large “T.”
Thus, news stories on this topic — to be complete — need to mention these issues. That is, if the purpose of a story is to describe the rebuilding and rebirth of St. Nicholas parish.
Now, let me note another painful detail in this long, complex, story — the legal issues. Here is the crucial section of the AP report:
The archdiocese always intended to rebuild, but the question was where, given all the components involved in reconstruction at ground zero. The archdiocese and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center, ended up in litigation in 2011 before settling on a site on Liberty Street, near the old church. Officials ceremonially broke ground in 2014.
But a new crisis arose. Costs soared beyond projections, and construction halted in late 2017 after the archdiocese fell behind on payments. The archdiocese, which had financial woes of its own, used $3.5 million in funds dedicated to the shrine for its own operating deficit and had to repay it.
The archdiocese appointed an investigating committee that attributed the St. Nicholas cost overruns to expensive change orders. Those architectural enhancements “may have been made with the best of intentions” for a shrine of such significance, but they pushed the cost far above the archdiocese’s public disclosures, the committee said in 2018.
Now, read this sentence again: “The archdiocese, which had financial woes of its own, used $3.5 million in funds dedicated to the shrine for its own operating deficit and had to repay it.”
Some readers will see that and think: Are we talking about a mistake or a crime?
Check out the fine details in this New York Post story from a few years ago: “Feds probe $80M construction scandal at church wrecked on 9/11.”
What happened with these investigations? I honestly don’t know. But it’s part of the story.
Finally, let me end by pointing readers to the reflections of my GetReligion colleague Clemente Lisi, who teaches at The King’s College in the Wall Street neighborhood. He did cover 9/11 for The New York Post — on foot, at the scene, on the day of the attacks. This passage from a 2018 piece, posted at Religion Unplugged, is a must read:
To see all that death and destruction was overwhelming. I was also overcome with sadness. It was as if I was no longer even a news reporter. I was a New Yorker who had seen his beloved city destroyed, his city’s skyline forever altered. I was also an American who had witnessed the worst act of terrorism in this nation’s history.
Screams immediately turned to fear. I got closer, only to be faced with police officers and office workers covered in thick gray ash running in the opposite direction. I got as close as the New York Stock Exchange, but no one was around. The streets were covered in ash, something that looked like images of a nuclear winter re-creation from a science-fiction movie. This didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be real. My brain couldn’t process the information. One of my first reactions was: “God, how could you let this happen?”
Of course, God didn’t let this happen. What happened just a few blocks from here was pure evil. It was the good that would later come out of the tragedy, the stories of heroism and sacrifice, that reflected God’s love.
FIRST IMAGE: Photo by Terry Mattingly of earlier construction work in the St. Nicholas project.