"I think they have chosen Somalia because there is no central authority," Bishop Giorgio Bertin said.

The decree for their beatification should be published sometime in January, Trappist Father Thomas Georgeon said.

The St. Nicholas National Shrine next to the World Trade Center memorial plaza was to replace a tiny church obliterated when the trade center's south tower fell in 2001.

The pope described the attack as a “wanton act of brutality directed at innocent civilians gathered in prayer.”

“I call on the Lord that he may convert the hearts of the terrorist and free the world of hate and that crazy homicide that abuses the name of God to disseminate death.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan said New York City is “stunned and horrified” by what police said was an act of terror on a Manhattan bicycle trail, in which at least eight people were killed and several more injured.