THE FIRST recorded victim of 9/11 had started his day at the Church of St Francis Assisi on 31st Street, opposite a firehouse that would lose seven firemen.
“Mychal Judge said his prayers and said Yes to the call, like he did every single day, and he went where he was needed,” says Brendan Fay, who is preparing two documentaries and a book about Fr Judge.
A few hours later, Fr Judge administered last rites to a fireman in the North Tower and was killed by falling debris. The photograph of Judge’s crumpled body being carried out on a chair has been called an American Pietà, a reference to Michaelangelo’s sculptural masterpiece showing Christ’s body draped in the lap of Mary. At his funeral, then mayor Rudy Giuliani called Judge a saint. The drive to canonise “Saint Mychal of New York” began soon after.
Judge’s parents were both from Co Leitrim, where the first monument to him was built by the people of Keshcarrigan. The chaplain “loved the fire department”, says Capt Denis McCool. “At his funeral, the priest said: ‘Fr Judge knew a lot of you would be going to heaven and he wanted to get up there to make sure you didn’t have any trouble getting in.’”
Judge was a reformed alcoholic who one told a prayer breakfast in the Clinton White House that Alcoholics Anonymous had done as much for mankind as Mother Teresa. He was discreet about his sexuality, which didn’t matter to the fireman, says McCool. “He was our shepherd.”
But in the decade since Judge’s death, Fay has received e-mails saying, “Mychal Judge was not gay; he was too good.” Conservative Catholics have accused Fay of fabrication, and warned there’s “a place in hell” for him.
The priest and the film maker became friends around 1986, when gay Catholic group Dignity was expelled from the church. “Mychal followed us to the lesbian and gay community centre and said Mass,” Fay recalls.
Judge ministered to Aids victims and the homeless. When a boatload of Chinese immigrants washed up on Rockaway beach, he took blankets and coffee to them.
Mychal Judge “had a heart as big as New York, with room for everybody,” says Fay. “He was a well known figure on the streets of New York. You would hear his laughter. He was in his habit and sandals at all seasons of the year.”
Scott Brown, a firefighter from Rhode Island, says his autistic son’s condition improved dramatically after prayers to Mychal Judge. “There are people who tell me they pray to him every day,” says Fay. “There is no doubt in most people’s minds that Mychal Judge is indeed a saint of 9/11.”
