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Atheist group objects to steel 'cross' at Ground Zero

'This is a Christian religious advertisement, and allowing it to stay there is an insult'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


A steel beam in the symmetrical shape of a cross — a remnant from the World Trade Center wreckage — has drawn criticism from an atheist group, which objects to the artifact being kept at Ground Zero as a religious emblem.
The trade center site is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bistate governmental agency that also operates the region’s three major airports and bridges and tunnels connecting the two states.

“Many people who died on September 11 weren’t Christian. There were Jews, Muslims, and atheists who died,” Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists based in New Jersey, told The Trentonian newspaper for Monday’s editions. “This is a Christian religious advertisement, and allowing it to stay there is an insult to everyone who doesn’t believe in that particular religion.”

Johnson and her group, founded by the late Madelyn Murray O’Hare, is considering a lawsuit to prevent the beam from becoming part of any permanent memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The beam was discovered two days after the attacks by construction worker Frank Silecchia as he searched for survivors.

A Franciscan priest, the Rev. Brian Jordan, blessed the cross and used it for months as a gathering place to celebrate Sunday Mass for ground zero workers and family members.

The names of fallen police officers and firefighters were also scribbled on the cross, along with the message “May God forgive their evil.”

Almost two years later, the 20-foot cross remains along Church Street, the eastern border of the 16-acre site. A petition was undertaken to make it a part of a permanent memorial.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a city-state group overseeing the rebuilding of the area, has made no decisions on what a ground zero memorial would include.

Originally published on September 8, 2003