The Most Reverend Alfred A. Schlert, Bishop of Allentown, will celebrate the Red, White, & Blue Mass at 8:46 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at the Cathedral of St. Catharine of Siena, 1825 West Turner Street, Allentown, marking 25 years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Mass of Thanksgiving honors those who serve and protect the community: police, firefighters, first responders, health care workers, military service members and veterans, legal professionals and government officials. Bishop Schlert invites all who serve in these vocations, along with their families, to attend. Those attending in a professional capacity are encouraged to wear their uniforms.
The starting time is deliberate. The Mass begins at 8:46 a.m. in remembrance of the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 — the opening moment of an attack that would claim nearly 3,000 lives, including hundreds of first responders who ran toward the danger.
This year's Mass carries particular weight as a quarter-century milestone. A generation has now grown up knowing Sept. 11 only through memorial and story rather than personal experience — making the occasion as much about handing down remembrance as observing it.
Following Mass, attendees will have the opportunity to hear remarks from Sister Deirdre "Dede" Byrne, M.D., a retired U.S. Army colonel, board-certified surgeon, and consecrated religious of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Sister Dede was there. In the aftermath of the attacks, she was present at Ground Zero, providing medical assistance, supplies, and support to responders amidst the ruins of the towers. She will speak on Sept. 11 not as an observer of that day, but as someone who served in the midst of it.
Her life has bridged the vocations of those who will gather in the Cathedral that morning. Following her father into surgery, she entered medical school at Georgetown University in 1978 on an Army scholarship and spent her early career on active duty, including 13 months in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and a tour practicing medicine in South Korea. She returned to Washington for her surgical residency, assisting in the care of Cardinal James Hickey following his 1996 open-heart surgery and, the next year, providing medical care to St. Teresa of Calcutta during the saint's 1997 visit to the capital.
In 2002, after two years of discernment, Sister Dede entered formation with the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, professing her first vows in 2004 and receiving permission from her community and the Vatican to continue serving as an Army reservist. That dual calling brought three more deployments, the last to Afghanistan in 2008. At her order's request, she retired at the rank of colonel in 2009, after 29 years in the Army, and professed her final vows two years later.
Her missionary work has taken her to Kenya, Sudan, Iraq, and Haiti, where she served following the 2010 earthquake. Today, she leads the order's house in Washington, D.C., where the sisters operate a pro bono physical therapy clinic and provide free and low-cost surgical care to the uninsured.
A reception will follow the Mass at 10 a.m. in the Cathedral Parish Hall.
Those planning to attend this Mass are asked to RSVP to stewardship@allentowndiocese.org.
The Red, White, & Blue Mass is offered as part of the Diocese of Allentown’s 65th Anniversary observance.
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