Fordham University commemorated the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Monday with a series of Masses, an interfaith prayer service and an interfaith peace vigil on the Lincoln Center, Rose Hill and Marymount campuses.
Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, called the victims of the attacks “patron saints of the ordinary” and urged the Fordham community to make their legacy not one of sorrow, but of transformation.
“My sisters and brothers, the victims of the attacks were and are far more than merely victims. In the aftermath of their deaths, they have also become our teachers, our mentors and our patrons,” Father McShane said in his homily during a Memorial Mass in the McNally Amphitheatre on the Lincoln Center campus. “And they have taught us great and important lessons about life, about faith and about love. … [L]et us honor them not by reliving the events of that terrible day five years ago, but by living lives that are enriched by the wisdom that they taught us while they were alive, and that they confirmed in the manner of their deaths.”
Thirty-six Fordham University alumni and three Fordham students died in the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “Fordham Remembers” T-shirts are on sale in the University bookstores, all proceeds from which go to the Fordham Family Memorial Scholarship Fund. The William D. Walsh Family Library is featuring an exhibition titled “Fifth Anniversary of 9/11/2001: We Remember Them” through December 21.
