Ground Zero, the site of the attack on the World Trade Center, covers 16 acres, the size of 14 football fields. Its boundaries mark the area where, 225 years ago, the Great Fire of 1776 destroyed the entire southeast part of New York City, including Trinity Episcopal Church. At the time, Elizabeth Ann Bayley was only two years old. Later, Elizabeth Seton spent most of her next 32 years in and around this area.

Trinity Episcopal Church was Elizabeth's first parish and where she was baptized. The home at 8 State Street on the Battery is now Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church and a shrine in her honor. After 9/11 the pastor, Rev. Peter Meehan, opened the church's doors to Trinity parishioners until they could once again worship in their own sacred space. Elizabeth Seton attended many an Episcopal service in Saint Paul's Chapel. As she struggled with her attraction to Catholicism, she wrote of sitting in a side pew at Saint Paul's and turning towards the Blessed Sacrament at nearby Saint Peter's Catholic Church. After the attack on the World Trade Center, emergency workers carried bodies of victims to the ancient churchyard of Saint Paul's. For months afterward, Saint Paul's, in the shadow of Ground Zero, served as a respite center where rescue workers could find food, rest, counseling, even a massage.

The first officially recorded death on 9/11 was that of Mychal Judge, O.F.M. Judge had been a chaplain with the New York City Fire Department for almost ten years. He was noted for his ministry to homeless people and persons with AIDS at Saint Francis of Assisi Parish where he had been parochial vicar since 1968. Rescue workers found his body, took it to nearby Saint Peter's Church and laid it by the altar. Educated by the Sisters of Charity of New York at Saint Paul's School, Brooklyn, Judge was never shy about his devotion to Saint Elizabeth Seton. Probably no one who brought his body to Saint Peter's knew that it was the site of Elizabeth's profession of faith as a Catholic, and her first Communion. The coincidence would have delighted Judge.

Saint Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center sits on a city block in lower Manhattan, 14 blocks from what was the World Trade Center Complex, for which it served as the primary trauma center. Disaster plans went into effect as soon as news of the disaster reached the hospital. S.V.M. paramedics were among the first emergency medical personnel to arrive at Ground Zero. They found a war zone in the middle of Manhattan. By 9:30 am they had treated 327 people and would treat over 300 more. S.V.M. set up a round-the-clock family crisis center. As many as fifty employees per shift checked names of the missing against several hospitals' patient lists, and provided transportation if a match were made. "Information was scarce," said Sister Miriam Kevin Phillips, SC - NY, senior vice president for mission, "But it helped us switch our energy, and we made sure that everyone who came in or called got to talk to a real person." During the next few days 6,800 family members and friends would contact the crisis center. Sisters Margaret Sweeney and Mary T. Boyle, SC - NY, were among those who helped with triage as victims arrived. Other Sisters of Charity, along with many associates, lay and religious, volunteered in pastoral care and patient relations, answered phones, listened, prayed, and extended sympathy, all with a characteristically Vincentian blend of affective and effective love.

Sister Kathleen Byrnes, SC - NY, coordinator of community outreach on Staten Island for Saint Vincent's and Bayley Seton Hospitals, was one of those who staffed the 24-hour phone lines covering the 10 pm to 3 am shift. She fielded several calls that first night, "as if it were the middle of the day," calls from embassies, foreign countries, firemen's wives.

Firemen on a truck from Rescue Company 5 raced by Immaculate Conception School on Staten Island and waved to Sister Mary Richard Rowley, SC - NY, who works in the rectory. Before the day ended that firehouse was to lose half of its men. Out of 343 firefighters killed, over 180 were from Staten Island. Three hundred and seven Staten Island children lost at least one parent; one parish lost 38 parishioners. Sister Mary Richard and Sister Marguerite McGilly, SC - NY counseled fire and rescue workers and provided changes of clothing for them so they could go home in uncontaminated clothing. One firefighter looked up at Sister Richard with weary eyes and said, "Sister, just listen to me - please - just listen" - and for days we listened, cried, prayed.

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