Rockville Centre: Bishop prays and remembers

Bishop William Murphy arrived on Long Island as spiritual head of the Diocese of Rockville Centre five days before 9/11. On the morning of the terrorist attacks, he was sitting in his fifth-floor office and saw the second jet hit the World Trade Center.

Sunday, he recalled the shock he felt that day, and how he instructed all the Catholic hospitals in the diocese to put themselves "at the disposal of the city, thinking that there would be injured. Unfortunately, there weren't even people injured."

That night, Murphy went to Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre to donate blood, but the staff would not take his for at least an hour, he said in an interview Sunday, because his blood pressure was so high.

At Sunday's 11 a.m. Mass at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, Murphy delivered a homily in which he spoke of America's pain, but also of its healing and hope since 9/11.

"The great sin of those who perpetrated this assault on our country and this massacre of innocent life was that they were motivated by hatred to destroy the innocent," Murphy said. " . . . We must never become like them . . . As Paul reminds us we do not overcome evil with evil; we overcome evil only with good."

During the Prayer of the Faithful, as the names of the 22 people from Rockville Centre who perished in the attacks were read aloud, the cathedral's bells tolled mournfully.