U.S. Ambassador remembers 9/11

As Americans prepare to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on Washington, New York and Pennsylvania, Tracey McClure speaks to the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Miguel Diaz.

At the time of the attacks on New York’s Twin Towers, Ambassador Diaz was a professor and Dean of the Catholic regional seminary of St. Vincent de Paul in Florida. He explains that he and the staff were gathered round a table in the seminary when they heard the news that a plane had crashed into one of the towers at the site known today as Ground Zero.

“Moments later people began to realize that something was happening in our nation that was not the usual business,” he remembers.

As he and the others tried to come to grips with the drama unfolding on the t.v. screen before them, Diaz says he thought it important to gather together his staff and students in prayer and reflection.

“Those are the times when the voice of reason, when prayer, faith all come together – when communities begin to really…people begin to depend upon each other. It’s one of those times that you wish you could extrapolate and you could magnify and perpetuate eternally because it is one of those times when differences that at times divide us disappeared and we stood together as one people and we helped each other.”

When asked if ten years on the U.S. is a changed nation, Ambassador Diaz says,
“I think so… with each day we learn anew and appreciate the value and the freedoms that we enjoy. I know this as ambassador. With all the security that surrounds me I appreciate a little more the value of freedom than I did before. I think the attacks on 911 made us more aware of how precious freedom is and how precious is the opportunity to just even walk in a street without fear of being attacked and without violence and without bombs dropping on you and your children. So I think it was very much a moment which we were made very much aware of those fundamental freedoms that we sometimes, any of us at one given moment, may take for granted.”

The United States Embassy to the Holy See is hosting a number of events to remember 911, including a series of roundtable discussions involving young people from around the world.

The U.S. ambassador explains it is “an opportunity for them to share their own vision of what the future should be: what the present is and what the present is not, and what the future should be. It’s a way for diplomats and adults also to listen to the young people because in them are also found the seeds of hope.”

Listen to the full interview: