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CNN Live Sunday

St. Paul's Cathedral Goes Back to Being House of Worship

Aired September 01, 2002 - 17:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WHITFIELD: In New York, a few steps away from Ground Zero, St. Paul's Chapel is once again fulfilling its primary objective as a house of worship. After the September 11 attacks, the church offered refuge to those who worked on recovery efforts. Here's CNN's Brian Palmer.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REV. DANIEL PAUL MATTHEWS, RECTOR: We were all certain it just sort of disappeared by virtue of the towers falling on it and then we were surprised to find not one window broken, quite dramatic.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now the chapel itself avoided structural damage on September 11 but what happened out here? What happened in the yard?

MATTHEWS: The yard got full of the dust, as we called it, deep as it was and it ruined all of the grass obviously. It tore down one of the big trees that was right across the street from the World Trade Center.

PALMER (voice over): St. Paul's Chapel instantly became a shrine to those killed and a center for relief and solace to rescue workers, one form of ministry giving way to another. The walls of the historic chapel plastered with tributes. Hot food and warm clothes distributed around the clock, massages, blistered feet treated where President George Washington worshipped 200 years ago. Perhaps most critically, a place to sleep, but feeding and caring for emergency workers battered the old church.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well I think we saw more people in those eight months than we would have seen in the chapel in the next 25 years from the wear and tear of the marble floor, the wood floors, the facilities here. It was an unbelievable amount of traffic coming in and out.

PALMER: A major renovation has restored the chapel to its September 10 condition with some reminders of those eight long months.

MATTHEWS: Every one of those scuff marks represents a firefighter, a police officer, a recovery worker who was sleeping here and just put his feet up against that and hit it. We decided those scuff marks were almost sacramental symbols of the peace that came for a half hour, an hour and a half.

PALMER: Closed to the public during the recovery efforts, St. Paul's is open again for daily worship and for visits by curious tourists.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're in a different time now. It certainly is time to begin thinking about moving on as the site has been cleared, our relief ministry ended, and now we begin to think about what's next.

PALMER: Next for St. Paul's a quiet memorial service and exhibition on the September 11 anniversary woven into its daily routine.

Brian Palmer, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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