those who still grieve following the most devastating attacks on American soil since World War Two.
Speaking on the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks after a ceremony in St. Johns Episcopal Church across the White House, Bush said that:
"We remember lives lost," the president said. "We remember the heroic deeds. We remember the compassion and the decency of our fellow citizens on that terrible day."
Holding hands, Mr. and Mrs. Bush stood with some 2,000 White House staff for a moment of silence on the South Lawn at the time of the first hit on the World Trade Center two years ago.
Later in the day, the President was scheduled to visit a local army hospital to meet with soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Voice of America (VOA) network reported.
CHURCH BELLS
Meanwhile in New York, church bells could be heard as the city marked the second anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
New Yorkers were commemorating the victims of the attack with a quiet ceremony focusing on the families – especially the children – of the victims.
VOA quoted city officials as saying that children are playing a primary role in this year’s commemoration because they show that the spirit of the city lives on.
Two hundred children who lost relatives in the attack are reading the names of the almost 3,000 dead and performing music throughout the solemn ceremony. Family members and a handful of officials are reading poems. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg read from the poem The Names, by former poet laureate Billy Collins.
NAMES ECHOES
"Names etched on the head of a pin, one name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel. A blue name needled into the skin. Names of citizens, workers, others and fathers. The bright-eyed daughter. The quick son. Alphabet of names in a green field. Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory. So many names there is barely room on the walls of the heart," read Mayor Bloomberg.
The ceremonies came shortly after Pope John Paul the Second said in a statement that Prophet Ezekiel reminds the faithful that "the purpose of God’s action is never ruin, never simply condemnation of the sinner."
As he prepared for his trip to Slovakia on September 11, the Pope told an audience that God allows evil so that "a new life will emerge." He said the Almighty will "sooner or later discover evil, defend victims, and show the path to justice," BosNewsLife monitored.
"FULL OF HOPE"
The Pope’s fundamental message to the audience was the need for believers to remain "full of hope" even in the darkest of times. Elsewhere in Europe and Russia, one of America’s key allies in the war against terrorism, there were only low key events.
However Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in a statement that while time will heal wounds and fade memories, all nations and their leaders, must remain vigilant in the struggle against terrorism.
Moscow celebrated its own grim anniversary earlier this week, the fourth anniversary of the first in a series of apartment house bombings in Moscow. The attacks killed hundreds of people and led Russian officials to renew their military campaign in Chechnya.
But correspondents said that the memorial ceremony for those who lost their lives in the Moscow blasts drew a small crowd of several dozen and passed largely unnoticed by the media.
The anniversary of September 11 was also overshadowed by the release a day earlier of a video tape of fugitive Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks.
