NY Daily News

Before presiding at a Mass for thousands at Yankee Stadium, His Holiness will visit Ground Zero with an intimate group of only two dozen to light a candle in the hush and say a prayer for peace.

Among the 24 will be Dympna Judge Jessich, twin sister of Fire Chaplain Mychal Judge. The whole world came to know Judge from the photograph of rescue workers carrying his body from the stricken north tower on 9/11. Some called the photo the modern Pieta, an image of sacrifice and devotion on a day when many began to mark God absent.

After the second tower collapsed, Judge's body was carried to St. Peter's Church and laid before the altar. Firefighters came in to pray over him, their tears making tracks on dust-caked faces.

These seven years later, the same church has been designated the assembly point for the 24 who will be going to Ground Zero with the pontiff whose own church has the original Pieta.

Jessich was raised Irish and Catholic in Brooklyn, but her visit to Ground Zero with His Holiness Pope Benedict will not likely eclipse her visit there in 2002 with Firefighter Jimmy Grillo.

Grillo was driving her to a memorial and their route took them through downtown Manhattan.

"Would you mind going to Ground Zero?" Grillo asked.

Grillo brought her down into The Pit, which had been cleared of the last of the debris. They stood together on the bedrock.

"Could we hold hands and pray?" Grillo asked.

They did just that in this towering void where her brother had perished and Grillo himself had quite nearly been killed. Hundreds of his comrades and so many other rescue workers had not been so lucky. They had given their lives with the hope of saving others, that greatest love that was much greater because it was for strangers of every faith and race and persuasion.

"A sacred place," Jessich said afterward.

So it will be on ground that she knows to be holy that the Pope will sprinkle holy water this morning. He will not be making it any holier, and he certainly is not seeking to claim it for his particular religion. He is expected to make that clear at the very start of his prayer.

"Oh, God of love, compassion and healing, look on us, people of many different faiths and traditions, who gather Sunday at this site, the scene of incredible violence and pain."

What he will be doing is showing us how to accord rightful reverence to a sacred place. Those who look at Ground Zero as a real estate opportunity or a venue for their ego should consider that it is in truth a spot so holy even the Pope kneels there.

And just as the Pope is not making Ground Zero holier, those who treat it as just a building site do not make it any less holy. Anyone who treats Ground Zero with less respect than does the Pope or, for that matter, Jimmy Grillo, only shames himself.

At the end of the ceremony, the Archdiocese of New York hopes to light candles from the one the Pope lights and carry them to other churches.

And the pastor of St. Peter's will be standing by with some holy water with the hope that the Pope will have a moment to bless the 20-foot cross of steel beams that stands at the side of the church. The cross was found by a construction worker amid the ruins of the Trade Center, and has become for many a symbol of the spirit that arose from the horror.

Sadly, the evil ones who perpetrated the attack are still out there, and they have the Pope high on their enemies list. The Secret Service does not want him standing exposed in the street even for a momentary flick of the aspergillum.

The pastor, the Rev. Kevin Madigan, hopes that maybe His Holiness can confer a blessing from the Popemobile.

"A drive-by blessing," Madigan said.

The cross and the candles in churches fall under the purview of the Catholic and the Christian, but Ground Zero itself belongs to everybody.

And everybody shares a continuing obligation to recognize Ground Zero to be what Jessich knew it to be when she stood on the bedrock holding Grillo's hand, saying a prayer for all who died there.