For New York celebrity priest, 9/11 closure will come with tolerance for ‘every path to God’
'You cannot be a truly godly person unless you have respect for every path to God,' said Monsignor Jim Lisante, who lost 30 parishioners on 9/11. Read the article from Religion News Service here.
Monsignor Jim Lisante at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Massapequa Park, New York, on Aug. 23, 2021. RNS photo by Renée Roden
Between Sept. 11 and Nov. 2001, he performed a seemingly unending series of funerals for the more than 30 members of his parish who died in the towers.
His devastating run of funerals was chronicled by The New York Times. It was strange, Lisante recalled, to preside at so many funerals with no body. Too many remains were crushed beyond recovery in the building collapse.
“Talk about lack of closure,” Lisante said.
One of those funerals was for a man whose wedding Lisante had just officiated a month earlier, in August 2001. The couple had just returned from their honeymoon. Sept. 11 had been the newlywed husband’s first day back at work.
About a decade later, the young man’s bride finally remarried. Lisante presided at that wedding, too. His voice cracks, and he wipes away tears as he recalls the story. “That was just one of so many stories,” he said.