Priests Try Vainly To Comfort Bereaved Relatives And Parents |
By ODMUND D'MOCH |
CHICAGO, Dec. 3 - (AP) - The acrid stench of burned bodies and clothing hung heavily over the morgue at the Cook County Hospital today. |
Inside, scores of priests and hospital attendants tried to comfort bereaved relatives still trying to identify the bodies of schoolchildren who died at Monday's fire at Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic School. |
Ninety sheet-covered bodies lay on stretchers in three rooms of the morgue basement. Some had been identified within hours after the fire. |
Some fire-blackened bodies contorted in agony may never be identified. |
Among white-clad nurses and morgue attendants could be seen the frocked figures of priests. Here was one, his arm around the shoulder of the weeping woman, trying to console her. |
“It was the will of God,” was heard in a low whisper from the priest. “Your daughter is an angel in heaven.” |
The woman wept unrestrainedly. |
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From the other side of the room came a shriek. A woman collapsed and immediately attendants ringed her, eased her into a chair and administered smelling salts. |
Nearby stood a couple in their 30s. Pale, dry of tears, they fingered a rosary, their lips moving wordlessly. The man had said earlier his daughter was not reported in any of the half-dozen hospitals to which many of the children had been taken. The couple came to the morgue, but had not looked at any of the unidentified children. They were praying she still might have only been injured, perhaps still in a hospital through some mixup in names. |
Hovering among the parishioners was Father Joseph Oginibene. This 32-year old priest, a native Chicagoan, came to Our Lady as the parish was know, in 1952. It was his first assignment after ordination. |
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He was “Father Joe” to everyone. |
It was his daily routine to walk about the schoolyard and near the entrances during recess, the noon lunch period and as the children left the building at 3 p.m. |
Monday, Father Ognibene met an old friend for lunch. They dallied at the table. Then he noticed it would soon be time for his young parishioners to leave school for home. |
“I was hurrying to the school in my car,” he said. “I saw smoke coming from the upper windows and drove my car the wrong way up a one-way street. I parked the car and ran into the building. |
“Some children were leaving the building in an orderly fire-drill manner. Others were running about, screaming. Then everything was ablaze. |
“I tried … I wanted to … It was the will of God.” |
When the first bodies began arriving at the morgue, Father Joe was asked to make tentative identification. He knew the greatest force of the fire was concentrated in the section housing Rooms 207, 208, 209, 211 and 212. |
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Scores of these children he knew by name. All were his friends. |
Yet, when he had to identify them by name, or grade, he could only whisper: “I'm not sure of this little one … I think this one was in 209 … This boy was … I'm not sure.” |
He pressed a thin, shaking hand to his temple. For a moment, it appeared that he might collapse. An attendant slipped a bottle of salts to the priest's nostrils and he straightened up, backing away from the pungent odor. |
Then he walked among the bereaved relatives. He stopped, talked with a weeping father. |
“It was the will of God, Stanley. Your daughter is now an angel in heaven.” |