BY KERRY SHERIDAN
The Rev. John Delendick, the Rev. Brian Jordan, and the Rev. Everett Wabst were three of the clergymen who devoted their time and offered their faith to survivors of the worst terrorist attack in American history. They ministered to hundreds of families whose loved ones had literally disappeared, presided over funeral masses in which there were no bodies to bury, and witnessed the demise of some of their closest friends. Each used his individual life experiences to reach the groups he felt he could help most—for Delendick, it was the surviving families; for Jordan, it was the rescue workers at Ground Zero; for Wabst, it was the firefighters.
Delendick and Wabst knew each other (and many of the firefighters who worked at the scene) before the ordeal. Jordan was entirely new to the task of counseling rescue workers. In myriad ways over the months to follow, each clergyman became both victim and survivor, both counselor and patient. As priests and pastors who had grown familiar with the rites of death during their long careers, they found that dealing with the carnage resulting from 9-11 required more inner strength than they had ever had to muster, and it changed the nature of their religious roles forever.
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