It took fire fighters 100 days to extinguish all of the fires ignited by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Fourteen years later, there still are fires burning.

They burn in the hearts of all those who lost relatives, friends, and co-workers when 19 men affiliated with Al-Qaeda killed nearly three thousand people with hijacked airliners. Of the four planes, one crashed in Philadelphia, one in Washington DC, and two slammed into the World Trade Center North and South Towers, leveling them and changing our world forever.

All these years later, I remember with perfect clarity being at home with our four children and preparing to start another school day. Then my husband called from work.

“Did you hear the news?” he asked.

“No. What’s up?” I said.

I didn’t like the tone of his voice; it was eerie.

“Just go turn on the news,” he said. Then he hung up.

I did turn on the news and took in the horrific scenes. I spent the rest of the morning holding and hugging my children and crying in disbelief.

I still get choked up just thinking about it.

While we didn’t lose anyone we directly knew in 9/11, we lost our fellow countrymen and we lost our sense of security.

It changed our family in other ways, too. I believe 9/11 was the main impetus behind one of our children enlisting in the Army National Guard. He subsequently served two deployments in the Middle East, and we served with him from the home front. Being a military family is an experience all its own.

But it’s nothing like what other families endured. On 9/11, 3,051 children lost a parent and seventeen babies were born to women whose husbands died in the attack.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have to tell a child that his mommy or daddy isn’t ever going to come home again.

Those children are alive today, trying to forge their own adulthood without one of the most important people in their lives around to help them along.

In the aftermath, workers sifted through more than one million tons of debris looking for remains and personal effects. They found 65,000 items, including 437 watches and 144 wedding rings. Those watches and rings belonged to real people who belonged to real families.

The cleanup didn’t officially end until May, 2002, and after workers had removed more than 108,000 truckloads – 1.8 million tons – of rubble.

Mixed in with that rubble are the remains of people who were – and still are – dear to someone. Of the thousands who died, only 291 “intact” bodies were found. There rest were merely body parts. Or no parts at all.

A Memorial was erected on the site in September 2011 and it’s been visited by more than 21 million people since, including dignitaries and heads of state from around the world.

Soon, Pope Francis’ name will be added to that list of dignitaries, and I’m looking forward to it.

During his historic and important trip to the United States (September 22-27, 2015), Pope Francis will meet with President Obama, canonize Bl. Junipero Serra, speak before a Joint Session of Congress, address the United Nations General Assembly, and participate in World Meeting of Families.

But on Friday, September 25, he’ll visit the 9/11 Memorial. He’ll pray at the site, and then gather with local representatives of the world religions inside Foundation Hall at the 9/11 Memorial Museum for a multi-religious meeting for peace. The Pope will deliver an address and then the group will pray together.

Especially after the shameful ticket fiasco for the Pope’s Philadelphia Mass, I’m thrilled that tickets for the 9/11 Memorial stop are limited to victims’ families, survivors, rescuers, recovery workers, first responders and members of the lower Manhattan community.

When Pope Francis comes to the US, I believe that families will be very much on his mind, not only because of World Meeting of Families, but also because of the alarming anti-family trends sweeping our country and infiltrating our legal system.

I cannot predict what the pope will do or say – no one can – but I believe that as he visits the 9/11 Memorial, the families affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 will be uppermost in his mind.

These are the people in whose hearts the fires still burn.