9/11 widow recalls meeting Pope Francis as 'something I'll treasure forever'

(OSV News) -- A widow who lost her husband in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks is remembering Pope Francis for his humility and compassion for grieving survivors.

"It was really special to meet with him and to ask for his blessing and his prayers," Virginia Bauer, an advocate for 9/11 families and a member of Holy Cross Parish in Rumson, New Jersey, told OSV News.

In 2015, the pope -- who died April 21 at age 88 -- traveled to ground zero in New York as part of an apostolic journey to the U.S. and Cuba.

The site commemorates those lost in the coordinated attacks, during which four commercial aircraft were hijacked by members of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaida and crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon. Passengers on one of the planes, United Flight 93, managed to overpower their captors, with the plane crashing into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, rather than reaching what is believed to have been a target in Washington.

In total, the four attacks spanning some 77 minutes would kill 2,977 people. More than 37,000 first responders and survivors have developed cancers and other ailments incurred by toxic dust, fumes and fibers from the debris; several thousand have died since then.

As part of his 2015 visit, Pope Francis joined Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and other religious leaders at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum at ground zero and met with a group of victims' relatives.

Among them was Bauer, now a trustee and member of the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

She told OSV News that the encounter was "especially poignant" for her as a Catholic.
"I just remember thinking, 'What a gentle man,'" she said.

That tenderness needed no translation through an interpreter, she added.

"I was the one who asked him for his blessing, asked him for his prayers, and he did nod," said Bauer. "I had rosary beads with me that he blessed, and my son had an Irish cross that his then-girlfriend's mom, but now his mother-in-law, had given him, and he blessed that for us."

Bauer said she "asked him to continue to watch over us, and he nodded and said he would."

Despite the pope's extraordinary prominence, "he seemed to really focus on you," Bauer said. "He listened to you, and he was not caught up with all the other dignitaries there, and certainly not with the accolades that he was receiving as he went through the city."

"At that moment, I felt like he was listening to us," Bauer said. "And, you know, it was just a few moments, but it's something I'll treasure forever."