Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House on Staten
Island was deeply touched and affected by the tragedy
of September 11.
The house became a center for caring and grief
counseling. Within two hours of the attacks, the
retreat house was inundated with people either
stranded by the closure of all bridges and highways
or actual victims of the attacks who had fled by ferry
and tugboat across the harbor to Staten Island. By
noon, the staff was feeding pizzas and reasonably
kosher food to a group of elderly Brooklyn Jewish
men and women frustrated in their effort to get to
Atlantic City.
That same afternoon, by golf cart, the staff fed
hundreds of people, including police and emergency
service personnel at bridge security checkpoints controlling
the hundreds of now immobile cars, buses
and trucks. In the midst of all this, pastoral counseling
was ongoing with people who had witnessed
the tragedy and themselves escaped with their lives.
That first evening Mount Manresa housed people
from 11 countries and Manhattan itself. In various
states of distress, they lived at the retreat house
for up to 10 days.
Local police, sheriffs from all over New York state,
firefighters, the Grief Counseling Unit of the Fire
Department of New York, Red Cross volunteers and
lawyers – all were either serving families of the dead
and missing there or were sleeping at night between
shifts at Ground Zero or the Staten Island landfill.
By the end of that first week, 30 detectives were
collecting DNA samples from people stranded at the
retreat house. They were also assisting with missing
persons’ reports or helping collate information for
death certificates.
In some ways, the place was unbearably sad as
scores of fire department widows and orphans
arrived. For the Manresa staff, it was a pastoral experience
unlike any other.
Sister Maureen Kelly, in her capacity as a transit
police chaplain, assisted at Ground Zero. Fathers John
King, Thomas Quinn, Richard Grogan, and Jack Ryan
were at the Staten Island landfill trying to be a supportive
presence for those working long and demanding
12-hour shifts. Others prayed and offered Masses
for those who died and for their survivors, especially
those who lost parents or other relatives.
Through it all Manresa managed to run normal
programs both for adults and youth. Students from
Regis High School, the Loyola School, Xavier High
School, and St. Peter’s Prep were among retreatants.
Xavier’s faculty were also present as were students
from St. Peter’s College, Fordham University, and a
parents’ group from Loyola School.
Sleeping twice as many people as the house’s normal
maximum and feeding hundreds of people at
once was challenging. The great consolation in all
this is that Manresa is certainly doing God’s work.
The dining room is filled with cards of sympathy and
gratitude to the staff. In November, 48 Red Cross volunteers
and six fire department personnel continued
to minister to the needy, jobless, widows, and
parents. Police and firemen arrive in the middle of
the night.
Life at Manresa is far from dull.
(Published originally in SJ New York, newsletter
of the New York Province.)
http://www.jesuit.org/Assets/Publications/File/NJN_v31n4_Feb_2002.pdf