Mychal Judge

This article is about the Roman Catholic priest. For the NY Waterways ferry, see Mychal Judge (ship). For the billiards player, see Michael Judge. For the cartoonist, see Mike Judge.

Mychal F. Judge
Judge’s name is located on Panel S-18 of the National September 11 Memorial’s South Pool, along with those of other first responders.
Born	Robert Emmet Judge (1933-05-11)May 11, 1933 Brooklyn, New York
Died	September 11, 2001(2001-09-11) (aged 68) World Trade Center, New York City
Other names	Father Mychal, Father Mike
Citizenship	United States
Education	St. Bonaventure University
Occupation	Roman Catholic priest
Title	Chaplain

Mychal F. Judge, OFM (born Robert Emmet Judge on May 11, 1933; died September 11, 2001) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York and the first certified fatality of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Early life

Robert Emmet (Mychal) Judge was the son of Irish Catholic immigrants from County Leitrim and the firstborn of a pair of fraternal twins. With his twin sister Dympna and his older sister Erin, he grew up in Brooklyn, during the Great Depression. His lifelong affinity for the poor began at a young age; he often gave his only quarter to beggars on the street.

At the age of six, he watched his father die of a slow and painful illness. To compensate for his father's inability to work, Judge shined shoes at New York Penn Station from where he would visit St Francis of Assisi Church on West 31st Street. Seeing the Franciscan friars there, he later said, "I realized that I didn't care for material things ... I knew then that I wanted to be a friar."

Franciscan Order of Friars Minor

In 1948, at the age of 15, Judge began the formation process to enter the Franciscan community. He trained at three seminaries in New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire before receiving his BA degree from St. Bonaventure University. He completed his training and was ordained a priest at Holy Name College in Washington, DC in 1961. Upon entering the Order of Friars Minor, he took the religious name of Michael, later changing the spelling to Mychal.

From 1961 to 1986, Judge served at St Anthony Shrine in Boston, St Joseph Parish in East Rutherford, NJ, Sacred Heart Parish in Rochelle Park, NJ, and St Joseph Parish in West Milford, NJ. For three years he served as assistant to the president at Siena College in Loudonville, NY. In 1986, he was assigned to the monastery of St Francis of Assisi Church on West 31st Street, New York, where he lived and worked until his death in 2001. Around 1971, Judge became an alcoholic, although he never showed obvious signs. In 1978, with the support of Alcoholics Anonymous, he became sober and continued to share his personal story of alcoholism to help others facing addiction.

In 1992, Judge was appointed chaplain of the Fire Department of New York. As chaplain, he offered encouragement and prayers at fires, rescues, and hospitals, and counseled firemen and their families, often working 16 hour days. "His whole ministry was about love. Mychal loved the fire department and they loved him." He was a member of AFSCME Local 299 (District Council 37).

In New York, Judge was also well known for ministering to the homeless, the hungry, recovering alcoholics, people with AIDS, the sick, injured, and grieving, immigrants, gays and lesbians and those alienated by the Church and society.

For example, he once gave the winter coat off his back to a homeless woman in the street, later saying, "She needed it more than me." When he anointed a man who was dying of AIDS, the man asked him, "Do you think God hates me?" Judge just picked him up, kissed him, and silently rocked him in his arms.

Even before his death, many considered Judge to be a living saint for his extraordinary works of charity and his deep spirituality. While praying, he would sometimes "become so lost in God, as if lost in a trance, that he'd be shocked to find several hours had passed." "He achieved an extraordinary degree of union with the divine," said Judge's former spiritual director, Father John McNeill. "We knew we were dealing with someone directly in line with God."

World Trade Center, September 11, 2001

Upon hearing the news that the World Trade Center had been hit, Judge rushed to the site. He was met by the Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who asked him to pray for the city and its victims. Judge administered the Last Rites to some lying on the streets, then entered the lobby of the World Trade Center North Tower, where an emergency command post was organized. There he continued offering aid and prayers for the rescuers, the injured and dead.

When the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am, debris went flying through the North Tower lobby, killing many inside, including Judge. At the moment he was struck in the head and killed, Judge was repeatedly praying aloud, "Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!", according to Judge's biographer and New York Daily News columnist Michael Daly.

Shortly after his death, a NYPD lieutenant, who had also been buried in the collapse, found Judge's body and, assisted by two firemen and two civilian bystanders, carried it out of the North Tower lobby to nearby St Peter's Church. This event was captured in the documentary film 9/11, shot by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. Shannon Stapleton, photographer from Reuters, photographed Judge's body being carried out of the rubble by five men. It became one of the most famous images related to 9/11. The Philadelphia Weekly reported that the photograph is "considered an American Pietà."

Mychal Judge was designated as "Victim 0001" and thereby recognized as the first official victim of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Other victims died before him including air crew, passengers, and occupants of the towers, but Judge was the first certified fatality because his was the first body to be recovered and taken to the coroner.

Judge's body was formally identified by NYPD Detective Steven McDonald, a long-time friend. The New York Medical Examiner found that Judge died of "blunt force trauma to the head".

Mourning and honors

3,000 people attended Judge's funeral on September 15, 2001, at St Francis of Assisi Church in Manhattan. Cardinal Edward Egan presided over the funeral Mass. Former President Bill Clinton, who attended the funeral, said that Judge's death was "a special loss. We should lift his life up as an example of what has to prevail ... We have to be more like Father Mike than the people who killed him."

Judge was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey. On October 11, 2001 Brendan Fay organized A "Month's Mind Memorial" in Good Shepherd Chapel, General Theological Seminary, New York. It was an evening of prayer, stories, traditional Irish music, and personal testimonials about Mychal Judge.

There have been calls within the Roman Catholic Church to canonize Judge (declare his sainthood). While there is no indication that Rome is seriously considering this, several churches independent of Rome, most notably the Orthodox Catholic Church of America, have declared him a saint.

Some Catholic leaders recognize Judge as a de facto saint. Some assert that Judge has already been declared a saint by widespread acclamation of the faithful, as was the custom of the early Church. There have been claims of miraculous healings through prayers to Judge. Evidence of miracles is required for canonization in the Catholic Church.

Judge's fire helmet was presented to Pope John Paul II. France awarded him the Légion d'honneur. Some members of the U.S. Congress have nominated him for the Congressional Gold Medal as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2002, the City of New York renamed a portion of West 31st Street "Father Mychal F. Judge Street", and christened a commuter boat "The Father Mychal Judge Ferry".

In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed The Mychal Judge Police and Fire Chaplains Public Safety Officers Benefit Act into law. This was the first time the federal government ever extended equal benefits for same-sex couples, allowing the domestic partners of public safety officers killed in the line of duty to collect their federal death benefit.

Soon after his death, the New York Press Club instituted "The Rev. Mychal Judge Heart of New York" journalism award, presented annually for the news story or series that is most complimentary of New York City. Entries focus on good news about people, places and deeds.

A campaign has been started in Carlstadt, New Jersey to have a statue of Judge erected in its Memorial Park.

Alvernia University, a private independent college in the Franciscan tradition in Reading, Pennsylvania, named a new residence hall in honor of Judge.

The Father Mychal Judge Memorial in the village of Keshcarrigan, County Leitrim, Ireland was dedicated in 2005, on donated land which had belonged to Judge's ancestors. People from the village and surrounding area celebrate his life every year on the 9/11 anniversary.

In 2006 a documentary film, Saint of 9/11, directed by Glenn Holsten, co-produced by Brendan Fay and narrated by Sir Ian McKellen, was released, celebrating Judge's life. The film includes testimonies of work colleagues and people who met him at different stages of his life. Larry Kirwan, leader of the Irish-American band Black 47, wrote a tribute song entitled "Mychal" in honor of Judge that appeared on the band's 2004 album New York Town.

The Father Mychal Judge Walk of Remembrance takes place every year in New York on the Sunday before the 9/11 anniversary. It begins with a Mass at St. Francis Church on West 31st Street, then proceeds to the site of Ground Zero, retracing Judge's final journey and praying along the way. Every September 11, there is a Mass in memory of Judge in Boston, attended by many who lost family members on 9/11.

At the National 9/11 Memorial, Judge is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-18, where other first responders are located.

Gay orientation and affiliations

Following his death a few of his friends and associates revealed that Judge was gay – as a matter of orientation rather than practice, as he was a celibate priest. According to fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen: "I actually knew about his homosexuality when I was in the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I kept the secret, but then he told me when I became commissioner five years ago. He and I often laughed about it, because we knew how difficult it would have been for the other firemen to accept it as easily as I had. I just thought he was a phenomenal, warm, sincere man, and the fact that he was gay just had nothing to do with anything."

The revelations about Judge's sexual orientation were not without controversy, however. Dennis Lynch, a lawyer, wrote an article about Judge that appeared on the website catholic.org. Lynch claimed that the priest was not gay and that any attempt to define him as gay was due to "homosexual activists" who wanted to "attack the Catholic Church" and turn the priest into "a homosexual icon".

Others refuted Lynch’s claims with evidence that Judge did, in fact, identify himself as gay, both to others and in his personal journals.

Judge was a long-term member of Dignity, a Catholic LGBT activist organization that advocates for change in the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality. On October 1, 1986, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an encyclical, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which declared homosexuality to be a "strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil". In response, many bishops, including John Cardinal O'Connor, banned Dignity from diocesan churches under their control. Judge then welcomed Dignity's AIDS ministry to the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, which is under the control of the Franciscan friars, thereby partially circumventing the cardinal's ban of Dignity.

Judge disagreed with official Roman Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality, though by all accounts he remained celibate. Judge often asked, "Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?"

Further reading

• Ford, Michael (2002). Father Mychal Judge: An Authentic American Hero. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-0552-7.
• Lynch, Kelly Ann (2007). He Said Yes: The Story of Father Mychal Judge. Paulist Press (illustrated children's book). ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0-8091-6740-1 |0-8091-6740-1 [[Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs]]]]. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Daly, Michael (2008). The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-30150-2.
• Sapienza, Salvatore (2011). Mychal's Prayer: Praying with Father Mychal Judge. Tregatti Press. ISBN 0-615-47331-8.

External links

• Fire Chaplain Becomes Larger than Life
• The Happiest Man on Earth: Eulogy of Fr. Mychal Judge
• Rev Mychal "Father Mike" Judge entry at Find A Grave

• An RTE Radio 1 documentary 'Victim No. 0001', September 3, 2011, describes his life and work
• An NPR Radio clip 'Slain Priest: 'Bury His Heart, But Not His Love
• Saint of 9/11 at IMDb