Station where the tragedy happened.
The Saint Francis Chapel & City Ministry Center has always been a special
place – right there on Weybosset Street, in the heart of the city’s financial
district.
At daily morning Mass you are likely to find a judge, a laborer, a CEO and a homeless person all sitting shoulder to shoulder.
The business community has long embraced the chapel. It’s not a bad place — regardless of your denomination – to briefly escape the daily grind.
For Catholics who toil in Providence the chapel represents a convenient way to fit one’s spiritual lives into one’s business calendar. Businessmen and women from all over the city flock there on Ash Wednesday, receiving ashes under a big tent during lunch hour. Holy Days of Obligation are also popular, as are confessions during the holiday season.
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Saint Francis Chapel is about community. Countless people attend meetings of support groups there. They may have a drinking problem, a marriage on the edge of breakup. It’s where so many sought comfort after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
So it came as no surprise that the Saint Francis Chapel was so quick to organize a prayer service in the aftermath of the West Warwick nightclub tragedy.
Last Sunday evening the Saint Francis Chapel was again about a community coming together to heal. This time, in the wake of 97 lives lost at The Station.
The crowd was typical for the chapel. There were young people and old people. There were suits and ties and expensive shoes. There were faded jean jackets, bandanas and work boots. But the faces all looked the same. They were long and tired. They were somber. And several times during the hour-long service, many of them simply melted into tears.
Fr. Frank Sevola, guardian of the Franciscan community in Providence, opened the evening with his own remarks. He encouraged the congregation to be involved — to sing, to pray.
“At a time when most of us are speechless, we’ll search for words and music to express our grief and longing,” he said.
A few minutes into the service, Fr. Frank called for a special “participatory prayer,” encouraging anyone personally touched by the tragedy to share his or her experiences.
Several people did. They read poems and prayers. They recited verses from songs. They asked everyone to remember friends who had perished.
Arnold Napolitano, a retiree from North Providence, slowly rose from his seat.
“I feel so fortunate to be here,” he said.
Napolitano’s twin 30-year-old daughters, Kimberly and Stephanie, attended the fateful concert at The Station, narrowly escaping the blaze by crawling through broken windows. Another few seconds, a wrong turn or stumble, and they might well have been killed.
The women figure God intervened.
Their father does, too.
He felt an obligation to come downtown to the prayer service at Saint Francis, in part for all of those who could not. He said just a few words and then turned to his daughters and told them he loved them. He kissed their foreheads, and sat down.
Right about then it didn’t matter where you lived or what you did for a living. You were a part of this community. You felt for Arnold Napolitano – and all those parents and brothers and sisters who weren’t so fortunate.
Fr. Frank didn’t try so much to offer answers, as to put things in some kind of perspective.
“Death is one of the most basic of human phases,” he said. “We go through so many of them without even a thought…So many things happen in our life. Many of them pass us by and we barely realize it…But at some point we are all faced with death. I think we would all agree that we really don’t know what we should do about death. It is most especially confusing when we are faced with the death of people who died so young and so tragically…We don’t know where to turn. We don’t even know what to say.”
After the prayer service I spoke to Arnold Napolitano.
Three days after the tragedy he was still visibly shaken. He watched his daughters speak to a crowd of television reporters, bright lights glaring on them. He listened as they described for the media the disturbing details of losing one another inside the nightclub, only to find one another outside. They mentioned dark smoke and chaos and feeling breathless.
Arnold Napolitano just shook his head, reflecting on how fortunate he is. His daughters are safe. Every day he sees the names in the paper, and on the television.
“As a parent, I look at that list every day…and I think that my daughters could have been on it.”
