As he’s done for several years, Fr. Thomas Colucci will celebrate a memorial Mass this Saturday for the 343 New York City firefighters killed at New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The Mass will be held at the Church of St. Francis, where Fr. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar and a Fire Department of New York chaplain, lived until he was killed on 9/11.
Fr. Colucci could have been one of the 343 victims, as he was one of the first firefighters to respond to the airborne attacks on the Twin Towers, which occurred 20 years ago this Saturday. Since retiring from the FDNY, he took up studies to become a priest and was ordained in 2016.