On Sept. 11, 2001, Fr. Brian J. Jordan, OFM, was at Ground Zero, helping with rescue efforts and serving as a chaplain there.

“I remember every detail, every event, every face down there. For me, it wasn’t 25 years ago; it was yesterday,” Fr. Jordan, 71, said in a telephone interview with The Good Newsroom. 

Fr. Jordan felt a particular closeness to the construction workers at the site, having served as chaplain to the building trades for decades. He serves as celebrant or concelebrant during the annual Memorial Hardhat Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He is currently pastor of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street in Midtown Manhattan, where he initially ministered as a parochial vicar during the Sept. 11 attacks.

Love, compassion, humility

Following the 2001 attacks, Fr. Jordan spent nearly 10 months celebrating Masses and blessing recovery workers at Ground Zero, taking over leadership in the community where his mentor, Fr. Mychal Judge, lost his life in the attacks.

“It’s from the ancient poet Cicero: ‘Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things,'” Fr. Jordan told The Good Newsroom by phone last Friday. “So the bodies may have died, but the memory of our loved ones will live with us forever. So they did not die in vain, remember: love and compassion, humility and grace.”

He hopes that the scope of those who died will be remembered. “We show great compassion to people from all walks of life, whether they’re from the uniformed services, the private sector, the construction unions, or people who were serving coffee in the towers that day; we remember all those from all walks of life. This was not just a national tragedy; it was an international tragedy, as people from more than 80 other nations lost loved ones as well. … We have a 9/11 Memorial in our church; it has steel from Tower Two.”

The Ground Zero Cross

Fr. Jordan is the author of two books, including “The Ground Zero Cross,” published in 2017, and has written numerous articles concerning pastoral ministry in the Church. He was instrumental in arranging first a public display of the Ground Zero Cross, two steel beams found in the shape of a cross in the World Trade Center wreckage, and later its inclusion in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum display.

He added, “I just hope that they read the names every five years, not every year. We know it’s important, but other deaths are important too. It was a terrible tragedy on U.S. soil, but I think it might be advisable, every five years. Other people have said that to me, and I agree with them. But that’s up to the Sept. 11 Memorial people to decide. The names are not forgotten, they’ll never be forgotten.

A Franciscan friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe who has served the Church for more than four decades. Fr. Jordan was ordained to the ministerial priesthood on May 14, 1983. In addition to his Master of Divinity degree, he also holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Massachusetts, and a Master of Professional Studies in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University, Ithaca.

Fr. Jordan has served in multicultural parishes in the Bronx and Manhattan, Boston, Mass., and Silver Spring, Md. He also served as the director of Campus Ministry at St. Francis College, Brooklyn. He is a former marathoner, having completed more than 60 marathons and competitive races.