Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . John Couloucoundis . September 9, 2005

Read more of Kim Lawton's interview with John Couloucoundis, fund-raising chairman at St. Nicholas Church in New York:

Photo of JOHN COULOUCOUNDIS

My family has been involved in shipping for many years, and we had an office downtown. My father was the first person to come into contact with St. Nicholas Church and he became quite involved through an association we had created called the New York Shipping Corporation Committee, a group of companies and individuals that represented Greek shipping interests in the United States. Because St. Nicholas was downtown, we regularly attended services and sponsored certain services of the church as well.

St. Nicholas is the patron saint of seamen and, at least in Greece, is very, very important to all people involved in shipping. I don't think there's a Greek ship out there that doesn't have an icon of St. Nicholas on the bridge, and there are many people who have sworn to miracles performed by St. Nicholas. People have been saved after shipping accidents or sinkings due to what they feel were the actions of St. Nicholas trying to help them or to save them. St. Nicholas is tied to the lore of shipping and is very important to anyone involved with the sea. That's why we supported the church; it was so important because of that relationship.

The thing that impressed me most about St. Nicholas was the intimacy of the church. It was a beautiful small church and, indeed, despite its size, there were some beautiful icons. There was a lot of history in that church, a lot of people who had brought icons and contributed to make it really a little gem. The thing you sensed in St. Nicholas was this close-knit community, these people who had been involved with the church for generations and supported it. And despite the fact that St. Nicholas was still downtown and most of the families were not downtown -- they were dispersed all over the New York area -- there was still a very strong sense of the church. It wasn't people simply just motioning through being at services. It was people who were very, very closely entwined with the church and who felt very strongly about it. You really sensed that spirituality when you went to the church. It was quite an atmosphere, very different from many other churches regardless of denomination. You sensed that strong community. The church itself was very beautiful, and the close feeling you sensed from people around it really made it something special.

The contrast between the interior of the church and the rest of the downtown area was very stark. Perhaps because the church was small, it made it even starker. There are some beautiful churches downtown, but they're relatively large, almost cathedral-like. St. Nicholas was this quiet gem. You would walk in, and it was so different from anything around it. You really couldn't hear much of anything going on outside. For whatever reason, it was very well insulated. The contrast was very, very stark. For people who needed to meditate or think or just gain a little bit of quiet time, it was a perfect place to go. Because it was such a spiritual place, regardless of denomination, regardless of religion, people felt something when they went in there. It was really quite different.

[After 9/11] one of the parishioners, Peter Drakoulias, managed to snap a shot of what was left, and the devastation was just unbelievable. There was absolutely nothing left of the church. It was buried under 30 feet of rubble. It was very, very painful. The whole experience was very painful, but especially so, knowing we had lost that church. No one was injured, no one was killed. But it was so stark, the change, the before and the after, that it was very, very disturbing. There was really almost nothing left. There were a few things from the altar. There was one torn icon that we managed to find, a broken cross that we were able to find. But the destruction was so complete, it was amazing that we found anything at all. We only found seven or eight artifacts out of this church which had hundreds of artifacts inside and icons and all sorts of things. The destruction was complete. It was unbelievable how complete it was.

Even finding the church was a major task. It ended up being found only through tracing a telephone wire. People familiar with the church were able to pull at the wire and find out that this is the corner of the church and then realized this is where the church is. That's how complete the destruction was and how much had fallen on top of the church. If it hadn't been for a few signs like wires or cables, we never would have even found the church. That's how bad it was.

Within about two weeks of the destruction of the church, the parish had already organized, having meetings and trying to figure out how to go forward. At the first meeting, there must have been close to 100 people trying to figure out how are we going to proceed? How are we going to move forward? Where are we going to hold services? How are we going to continue the church? How are we going to keep this parish together, and what do we need to do to start rebuilding or where do we go to start rebuilding? The response was almost immediate on many, many different fronts, even in terms of contributions and people offering to help. We received literally hundreds of phone calls in the first few weeks from people willing to donate not only money but time, materials -- bell makers calling and saying, "We're going to make your new bells," all sorts of things of that nature, which we keep on file for obvious reasons, because we will rebuild, and we will need those things. The response was amazing. It was across the board. Regardless of denomination or religious affiliation, people wanted to help.

What does St. Nicholas as a center represent? The way we look at it, we have a responsibility. God is God, whether one is Greek Orthodox, whether one is Catholic, whether one is Jewish or Muslim. We all believe in one God, so immediately we all focus on spirituality, on how a holy place was destroyed. People were very much touched by what happened to that church and realized it is a spiritual place. What people want -- and I sense it from our own parish, but even people who have contributed money, whether it's from Italy or from Qatar or from Boston or from anywhere in the world -- is to see a place rebuilt that is spiritual, that will allow people to come in and contemplate, memorialize, and just remember. Our mission is to accomplish that. Certainly we're an Orthodox parish, but I think our goal is to have this church open to anyone who wants to come in and spend some time and reflect, just like it was before it was destroyed. There were many, many people from the Wall Street area who had no affiliation with the church, who were not necessarily Christian, but they understand the spirituality of the place. I think we have an even stronger mission to do that in the future. People sense that. They really want to see this place rebuilt because it is important. It's a direct victim of what happened on 9/11. So we resurrect it. It's a resurrection in a greater sense than resurrecting a building. It's really resurrecting a community that has given to the Wall Street area for many, many years.

St. Nicholas will be a holy place, and it will be a spiritual place. We want to focus on the community and open our doors to the world. There's a lot of emphasis on rebuilding the downtown area for commercial reasons. Of course it's very, very important to the economic well-being of the city and to revitalizing downtown. But at the end of the day, it's also a very painful place for many people, not only the people who lost loved ones on 9/11. It stretched far beyond that. People all over the world have been touched by what happened on 9/11, people with no direct relationship to anyone lost on that day. When they come and visit this site, they'll be pressed by a variety of different pressures. There will be the commercial. They will see the Freedom Tower, a museum, the memorial space. But we'd like for them to spend some time in a spiritual place where they can really sit down and think and contemplate about what happened. It's hopefully a connection to God for them. That's really the most important thing. The other thing we'd like to do is try to bring people together from all over the world and be a small focal point. Regardless of your religion or your religious belief or, as the archbishop said, if you don't even believe in God at all -- it's irrelevant. It's a place where we can all come together and think about what happened and maybe spend a little bit of time thinking about how to avoid such a thing in the future. If the church can be a lightning rod for that and a focal point for that, it would really, really be wonderful and would accomplish our goals. We now realize that we have a much bigger responsibility than being a parish church. We're very much aware of that.

I was lucky enough to go to Italy, for example, and the city of Bari gave us a very large donation. It was amazing talking to people and how they felt about what had happened to St. Nicholas and generally what had happened on 9/11. We've gone from community to community, and the sense of outreach and loss has really been worldwide. These types of acts are pretty heinous. They're beyond awful. You really can't put a word to them. They touch everybody, because one way or the other, this could happen to you, me, or anybody. You walk off the street, and some horrible event like this happens. All of these people do feel a sense of connection with a place like St. Nicholas. It doesn't hurt that St. Nicholas is the most popular saint in the world, and many people feel a connection anyway with that particular saint. But it continues to be that way, and there are people who are constantly pressing us to move forward, to be valiant, to be strong, and to make sure that the church is rebuilt. We have a very strong responsibility to get that done. It is very much a worldwide commitment. When the church opens its doors, we'll be a small parish, but we'll have hundreds of thousands of people coming through just because of what happened and what the church represents and what it represents in the future -- that here's something that can be rebuilt for the good of everybody. We will actually be, perhaps, a worldwide parish in one sense. We'll have affiliated parishioners just by virtue of the fact that so many people will stop by and visit this place as a way to connect with the spiritual side of 9/11. That's what we're hoping for.

The assurances we have from the state, the federal level, the city level are that the church will be rebuilt. One of the problems is the logistics of doing that amid all the other demands and constraints of the ground zero area. Until recently, so many of these outstanding issues have been pending, and we're just seeing now, one by one, some of these major issues being put aside.

Our job is to show spirituality even in the way we negotiate. Our job is not to be confrontational. That doesn't accomplish anything, and the mission of the church is to be anything but confrontational. It's the other way around. We have to try to be accommodating and allow all sides to join and come into our community. That's our goal, to do it in a way that really provides for the spirit of rebuilding but, of course, mak[e] sure that we get something that's fair and appropriate for the church and its mission.

When you're away from your home, you get homesick. It's logical, after four years of being outside your home, that you want to see some completion to all of this and some finality so that you go ahead and start rebuilding your home. I think we're getting to the point where we do have to try to finalize things, just keeping in mind that four years have passed. It's very easy to forget that. The years go by, and you realize that 9/11 was four years ago. Of course there is work to be done; there's work to design the church, to put all the pieces together, to build the church. That's not something that happens overnight, and we have to plan for that. We want to see this built as quickly as possible. There are, of course, many buildings and a lot of infrastructure that have not been built around ground zero yet. It's not surprising what's happened. But we'd like to move on with it. We have parishioners pressing to move on with it.

To design a church, you have to know how much space you're going to have and what the constraints are on that space. We have a security issue, of course. Some of the land that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) is purchasing is going to be used as entrance ramps for the World Trade Center. There are a lot of underground issues. A lot of the infrastructure is underground, so what you can put above ground is dependent on what goes on underground. And there are still some design analysis plans being done by the Port Authority trying to figure out what they want to put underground. Those things have to be finalized for us to be able to say we can build a church that's so big or so high or can house so many people. Our final space is dependent on these types of things. We do have some space requirements, and the LMDC and Port Authority are aware of those. We've put them forward and they've been cooperative in trying to accommodate those things, but they are in the process of finalizing other tracts of land, and they've been hedging a little bit until they get other pieces of the puzzle figured out before they tell us what it's going to be and [ask us], "Are you happy with this?"

We've done quite a bit of fund raising, but we've quieted down a little bit because, typically, with any fund-raising effort, you need to show people a final plan, or at least an idea of what you plan to do, and you have to show people a thermometer. You have to create a goal for that fund raising. How much money do you need? You have to know what your land size is going to be. Based on that, what can you build? Based on what you build, what's that going to cost? "This is our basic design, this is what we're going to accomplish, this is why we'd love you to help us with and what we need to reach -- our thermometer requires this much money, can you please help us?" Without having other pieces of the puzzle, we don't think it's appropriate to go out and beseech people for money. Once those things get put aside, we'll be out there describing our mission, showing people what we plan to do. We hope that what we plan will be very sensitive to the spiritual needs of the world community, and people will grab onto that and support the church in many different ways. It's not only about money. People have offered materials; people have offered their time. Rebuilding a church in a sensitive location is a very time-consuming project; one has to be sensitive to the needs of the community, the parish, and the world. Doing it right and having people who can assist us is as important as raising money. We'll call on many people to do many things to make this a reality.

Helping the church was something that came to me almost as a calling. I can't really explain it, and I think anyone who's ever had a calling can't really explain it. In Bari I was talking to Father Jovani Matera, the pastor of the St. Nicholas Basilica. I told him I had this calling, and he had an understanding because of course, he's had a calling as well. I think everybody after 9/11 felt they needed to do something to help in some shape or form, and everybody finds a different way of doing it. I felt that I needed to do something about this church. I felt close to the community. I felt that something was telling me this church needed to be rebuilt, and so I joined with a lot of fervor, and it's still there. I still very much push St. Nicholas to anyone who will listen and explain to them what the mission is and what the importance is.

We need places in the world where people can come together and forget their differences and really concentrate on their similarities, because you see so much extremism in the world in so many different ways. It would be great if we had a place where people could come in and set aside their differences, whether based on religion or race or political belief, and just sit down and realize that we're all the community of man, and we all have to live together. If St. Nicholas can create that kind of an environment where we concentrate more on the spiritual, on how we're all really connected rather than how we're all disconnected, then I think the church will play a very huge role in helping heal wounds and maybe helping prevent some of these horrible occurrences in the future. If we do that, then we've really accomplished our mission a hundred times over.

We'll be a parish church. We'll do all the weddings and the funerals and the baptisms and the Sunday services and everything else that a church does. But at the end of the day, it's really about a place that allows you to focus on what happened on that day [9/11] and on how to avoid that happening in the future. We can bring together people from all over the world to accomplish that. We have ideas of doing some special events and things of that nature, but just [being] a place where people can come in and say, "You know what? This is really the way it should be. We're all connected. Here's a place; regardless of whether it stands as an Orthodox church, it's a place where we can be and can really reflect." That's where we really want to be. We want the world to feel that when they come to St. Nicholas. If they don't feel that elsewhere in New York, they'll definitely feel it in St. Nicholas. That's our goal, and I think we'll accomplish it.