The WTC Cross

This is such a beautiful story.

On September 23, 2001, The New York Post Published the Following Story:
© NY Post

You are looking at what some people believe is a miracle.

Two days after the disaster, a construction worker found several perfectly formed crosses planted upright in a pit in the rubble of the heavily damaged 6 World Trade Center.

The large, cross-shaped metal beams just happened to fall that way when one of the towers collapsed. An FBI chaplain who has spent days at ground zero says he has not seen anything like it on the vast site.

As word of the find has spread at ground zero, exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed rescue workers have been flocking to the site to pray and meditate.

"People have a very emotional reaction when they see it," says the Rev. Carl Bassett, an FBI chaplain. "They are amazed to see something like that in all the disarray. There's no symmetry to anything down there, except
those crosses."

Chaplain Ray Giunta of Sacramento, Calif., has been to the crosses to pray with rescue workers.

"One of the firefighters pointed to them last night and told me, ‘There's my angel,'" Giunta said.

The angel protecting the pit where the crosses were found is the Brooklyn-born hardhat who found them: a gentle giant named Frank Silecchia.

Silecchia, 47, who now lives in Little Ferry, N.J., found the crosses on the Thursday morning immediately following the collapse of the towers. He marked the site by spray-painting on a nearby wall the words "God's House," and a directional arrow.

"The crosses are just shards of steel that came from the Tower 1 [the north tower], and went right through the roof of Building 6 and destroyed the entire center of it," he explained.

"When I first saw it, it took my heart, and made me cry for about 20 minutes," he says. "It helped me heal the burden of my despair, and gave me closure on the whole catastrophe."

In subsequent days, Silecchia, a born-again Christian, led his fellow rescue workers and others - many of whom were grieving the loss of loved ones - to the crosses.

A veteran firefighter who had been digging through the twisted metal for his lost firefighter son. An angry cop who lost someone in the collapse. A Vatican representative, who photographed the crosses for the pope. And ABC's Barbara Walters.

He says they all left in peace.

"Barbara Walters' niece lost her son in the building," he said. "Barbara told me she wanted people to see the House of God, so people who needed healing could find it."

More pictures can be found here.



4 October 2001 Blessing

It is the same cross used in the October 4th memorial ceremony with the New York City Fire Department. The cross of steel beams was blessed at Ground Zero on the northwestern side of the World Trade Center attack site. The cross was found by a laborer at the site two days after the twin towers' collapsed and later moved to its present location. Father Brian Jordan blessed the cross. The cross was from World Trade Tower One, and was found in World Trade Building Six, and then moved to the October 4, 2001 location.