The ivy-covered, wildflower-strewn grotto with the Virgin Mary statue was expected. The 9/11 memorial was not. I encountered both within a few feet of each other during an early July walk through the grounds of St. Kevin’s Parish Church in Glendalough, County Wicklow.

The simple granite sculpture, seen below, represents the 110-story twin towers of the former World Trade Center in New York City, reduced to rubble after terrorists flew planes into each building 25 years ago. The sculpture was the last creation of Brother Joseph McNally, a County Mayo-born artist who witnessed the towers collapse. He died two weeks before the first anniversary of the attack.^[1]Marie Cranley, St. Kevin’s parish secretary, in August 19, 2026, email reply to my outreach. Brother McNally should not be confused with New York-based photographer Joe McNally, who created the … Continue reading

“This monument marks the tragedy and challenge to peace posed by this event and is located in the context of a path reflecting on the defining choices we make on our journey today,” reads a description on the Glendalough Hermitage Centre website. The retreat center and parish church are joined by a large meditation garden, which contains other pieces by Brother McNally. The famous sixth century monastic ruin is just a mile down the road.

The 9/11 monument reminded me of an earlier trip to Ireland. When I landed in Dublin on September 22, 2001, Irish newspapers were packed with stories about the terrorist attacks. The death toll was still uncertain at the time. It eventually settled at just under 3,000 people killed and upwards of 10,000 injured. Some 4,000 others are said to have died later from injuries and exposure to toxic dust. Eighteen of the victims had Irish citizenship, with seven born on the island of Ireland. Moreover, at least a third of the victims had direct family ties to Ireland, including numerous members of the Fire Department of New York and New York Police Department.^[2]“Memories of 9/11 at Home and Abroad”, Irish American Heritage Museum, Albany, NY. Undated web page accessed at https://irish-us.org/events/memories-911-home-and-abroad. Wikipedia says six Irish … Continue reading

One of my first stops was a memorial to victims of the May 1974 Dublin and Monaghan attacks; a one-day series of multiple car bombings in the Irish capital and Northern Ireland border town. The Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary group during the Troubles, 19 years later claimed responsibility for the carnage. Thirty-three people were killed and nearly 300 injured.

Later, in Derry, Northern Ireland, I visited a memorial to 14 victims of Bloody Sunday, in January 1972, when British troops opened fire on civil rights marchers. It is located near the “Free Derry Corner” of the city’s Bogside neighborhood, better know for its colorful murals that depict the episode and other events of the Troubles. I also attended a hearing of the Saville Inquiry at the Guildhall, the government’s second probe into the bloodshed. The original inquiry, hurriedly conducted in 1972, was widely dismissed as a whitewash.

“We will be here as long as we need to be,” John Kelly, brother of one of the victims, told me. “What’s a couple more years, since we have waited nearly 30 to hopefully get truth and justice.”^[3]“Terrorism In Northern Ireland”, Mobile Register, October 28, 2001.

It would take nine more years before the Saville Inquiry produced its damning report. British Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologized for the massacre, telling the House of Commons the killings by British soldiers were “unjustified and unjustifiable.”

Indeed, state actors can also be terrorists, as we see today with the Trump administration’s militarized immigration enforcement and other domestic policing. There’s also a notorious example in Irish history. On the same trip that brought me to St. Kevin’s, I stopped at the Ballyseedy Monument, just outside Tralee, County Kerry. In March 1923, during the Irish Civil War, Irish Free State forces tied eight anti-government fighters to a landmine, detonated it, then finished off the few who survived the blast with machine gun fire.

Back in 2001, Kelly told me he was stunned by the airplane attacks in New York and Washington. “It was one of the most horrific acts of terrorism I have witnessed, even if you put it side-by-side to any event that has happened over the last 30 years in our country.”

A few days later I drove to Omagh, also in Northern Ireland. In August 1998 an Irish Republican Army splinter group carried out a car bombing that killed 29 people and injured 220. The post-Good Friday Agreement attack was the deadliest single event of the Troubles, second only to the collective toll of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. In the grim math of terrorism, the ratio of victims to residents in Omagh, population 17,000, was higher than in New York City, population 8 million.

“People here can relate to what’s happening in America,” David Killen, publisher of a weekly newspaper in Omagh, told me in 2001. “There were people here who that had to bury coffins filled with sand bags because they didn’t have a body.”^[4]Ibid. Twenty-five years after 9/11, despite advances in DNA technology, there are still no identifiable remains for 40 percent of the victims at the twin towers—1,100 people.^[5]“Inside the lab working to identify the remains of 9/11 victims”, NPR report of September 11, 2025, accessed at … Continue reading

I walked from Killen’s office, past the still rebuilding blast site, to the town’s Memorial Garden on the banks of the River Strule. Tiny US flags and other makeshift remembrances linked the terrorism victims in America to those in Ireland. “Time slips past, but the heartache lasts,” read one handwritten note blurred by the rain. The 9/11 memorial in Glendalough reminded me of that simple truth. It doesn’t matter what violent outrage is being remembered, or how long ago it occurred, or whether it was committed by state or non-state terrorists.

Grottos that commemorate the reported 1858 appearances of the Virgin Mary to the young Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France, are ubiquitious in Ireland; on church grounds such as St. Kevin’s, rural crossroads, and village squares. They are lovelier and more peaceful to consider than memorials to victims of violent terrorism.

In Ireland, there are at least four other 9/11 memorials in addition to Brother McNally’s sculpture. In the United States, the three primary national 9/11 memorials are at the attack sites in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. But many dozen more 9/11 memorials are found in American communities, large and small, from coast to coast. You might encounter one when you least expect it.

Lest we forget.