Pope tours 9/11 Memorial

Posted 2015-09-25 20:49 by Grunt Report

Pope Francis said a prayer of remembrance and addressed religious leaders at an interfaith ceremony at the September 11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan, as he continued his tour of New York Friday.

The pope arrived to cheers from the gathered crowd, and walked toward the two massive waterfall pools that mark the footprints of the World Trade Center’s twin towers before they were destroyed in the 2001 terrorist attacks.

He shook hands with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and began speaking with some 18 people from 10 victims’ families.

In his remarks, Pope Francis asked God for eternal peace for those killed as well as healing for the relatives of the nearly 3,000 people lost in the 2001 terror attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania.

And he prayed to God to bring “peace to our violent world” and to “turn to your way of love” those who justify killing in the name of religion.

Francis visited the museum after a speech at the United Nations Friday morning in which he condemned ethnic violence and the destruction of the environment.