Remembering The Saint of 9/11: Father Mychal Judge

Remembering The Saint of 9/11: Father Mychal Judge



Father Mychal Judge




On 9/11/01, rescue workers remove the body of Father Judge, a parish priest from one of New York's fire halls. Father Judge was administering last rites to a firefighter who was killed by one of the many bodies that fell to the ground after people leapt from the tower to their deaths, when he too was struck and killed.

Father Mychal Judge

There is a word that upsets Cardinal Edward Egan more than "terrorist" and that is the word "gay."
After the funeral service for Father Mychal Judge, the fire chaplain who perished ministering to a dying fireman at the World Trade Center, I tried to ask Egan, "Given Father Mychal's many contributions to the gay community and all you've just heard about how loving and loved he was, does it make you want to rethink your condemnation of homosexuality?" When Egan heard the word "gay," he didn't wait for the question. "Oh, COME ON!," he thundered as he abruptly turned away. Purple with rage, he literally ran to his car.

Egan's response explains Mychal Judge's decision not to be a more outspoken gay activist-- something that he debated with me, host of a gay news show on TV that he said he enjoyed, and others over the years. Cardinals John O'Connor or Egan would certainly have put an end to his ability to function as a priest in this Archdiocese, a role that allowed him to roam the city in his brown Franciscan habit giving solace and strength to countless New Yorkers. It might also have meant the loss of his chaplaincy serving his beloved fire fighters, even though he enjoyed the support of the Fire Commissioner, Mayor, and virtually all the rank and file.

At his wake and funeral, Mychal Judge, 68, was mourned and celebrated by his two sisters, brother Franciscans, elderly nuns who were his grade school teachers, powerful friends, diverse parishioners, the homeless and others he served, and scores of fire fighters, some covered with dust from the catastrophe downtown. But evidence of Judge's involvement with the gay community-- and his wary relationship with the church hierarchy-- was hiding in plain sight.

At the wake, Mayor Giuliani himself said, "Father Mychal is now up in heaven with Cardinal O'Connor-- and O'Connor is letting him say mass," referring to the rivalry these two priests had, especially over funerals of fallen fire fighters. It was a grim day in a devastating week, but the mourners roared with knowing laughter.

Eulogizing him at the funeral, Father Michael Duffy broke up the crowd and humanized his friend by noting that when Judge got the word to dash downtown to the stricken Trade Center, "he did take time to comb and spray his hair!" Public Advocate Mark Green spoke of how he served people of "every orientation."

The night before, his 23 years in Alcoholics Anonymous were invoked, but not that Judge went mostly to gay AA meetings. His gay brothers from the program were all over the church.

Present in the pews were Judge's close friends, gay couple Brendan Fay and Tom Moulton. Judge had openly supported (and surreptitiously funded) Fay's Queens St. Patrick's Parade that welcomed gay groups, the only Catholic priest to do so. (The next one, on March 3, is dedicated to Judge's memory.) And when the Emerald Society of the Fire Department honored Father Mychal, he had Brendan and Tom as his guests and the couple danced together at the banquet. He was always building bridges, especially between the conservative and progressive worlds he was equally at home in.

Hillary Clinton inelegantly spoke of the "AIDS victims" Judge helped. She did not note how that ministry came about. When Cardinal O'Connor expelled Dignity, the gay Catholic organization, from St. Francis Xavier Church in the mid-1980s, Judge provided a home for the group's AIDS ministry, led by the Rev. Bernard Lynch, an outspoken gay priest. Judge later made that outreach St. Francis of Assisi's own. Several gay men came at the funeral told me how Judge had buried their partners and gotten them through their grief.

In 1988, Lynch was falsely accused of molesting a teen-age student at a Bronx school he once served. Lynch said that without being asked, Judge "flew to Ireland to meet with my provincial superior to tell him that the charges were politically motivated because I had stood up against the Cardinal in 1986 on the gay rights bill." This, Lynch said, convinced Father Con Murphy, his superior, to hire high-powered lawyer Michael Kennedy to defend Lynch. Judge made a side trip to a small Irish town to reassure Lynch's father about his son. Lynch returned to the Bronx and the flimsy case evaporated in court, with Judge Burton Roberts angrily declaring the priest not just "not guilty," but innocent of all charges.

The Archdiocese denies any involvement in bringing the charges, but they never answered letters from Kennedy seeking their files on Lynch nor pleas from religious leaders asking the Cardinal to help him. While O'Connor did speak out for his friend the Rev. Bruce Ritter when he was charged (accurately) with abusing boys at Covenant House, he was silent while Lynch twisted in the wind. Now the Archdiocese can know that their church's hero, Mychal Judge, helped undermine the case meant to destroy Lynch.

Judge kept a high profile, from comforting the kin of those who died on Flight 800 and meeting with Presidents to his poignant martyrdom on Bloody Tuesday. But in other ways, he was like the underground priests in Ireland, homeland of his parents, who defied the 18th century anti-Catholic Penal Laws, saying mass on the sly and always on the run. Working on gay issues, however, he was hiding from his own Cardinal Archbishop, who proclaimed him a saint at his funeral and refused to hear that Judge was the kind of person his church has condemned as "intrinsically disordered."

For Mychal (nee Emmet) Judge, an Irish American kid from Brooklyn, gayness was one of his many gifts, but it was the one that gave him his most personal experience of being an outsider, blessing him with the empathy that gave him such a tremendous ability to connect to and heal so many broken people.



More:
http://www.whitecra nejournal. com/wc_Father_ Mychal_Judge. htm



Father Mychal F. Judge, The Saint of 9/11

Father Mychal F. Judge, OFM was a busy Franciscan priest who dedicated his life to serving God's people. He is known for his work with the homeless, recovering addicts, AIDS patients, and his work as chaplain to the New York City Fire Department.

On September 11, 2001, Father Mychal rushed from the friary at Saint Francis of Assisi Church to the scene of the World Trade Center attacks.

After administering last rites to a firefighter, Father Mychal was hit by debris and killed. He became the first officially recorded fatality following the attack.

During his life, Father Mychal spent much of his time ministering to the homeless on the Breadline at St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York City. This is one of the many places where he found God - in the hurting, the broken, the suffering, and the poor.

His dedication to homeless men, women and children has become a calling to us that manifests itself as Mychal's Message.


Father Mychal F. Judge, OFM Biography
Reprinted with permission of the Holy Name Province.

Father Mychal F. Judge, OFM, chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, died Tuesday, September 11, 2001 in a hail of falling debris near the World Trade Center. He became the first officially recorded fatality following the attack. Father Mychal was 68.

Born in Brooklyn, NY on May 11, 1933, Robert Emmett Judge was the son of two Irish immigrants from County Leitrim. As a young boy, he watched his father die after a long illness. To help his mother and two sisters make ends meet, he shined shoes in Manhattan, ran errands and did odd jobs, before being called to his Franciscan vocation at age 16. He then entered St. Joseph's Seraphic Seminary, Callicoon, NY, and graduated in 1954 after completing the first two years of college.

He was received into the Franciscan Order on August 12, 1954 and the following year, on August 13, professed his first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as stated in the Rule of Life of St. Francis of Assisi. He professed final vows on August 20, 1958.

He was ordained to the priesthood on February 25, 1961 at the Franciscan Monastery – Mt. St. Sepulchre, Washington, DC. He spent a year of pastoral formation at St. Anthony Shrine, Boston, Mass., before his first assignment 1962-66 as an assistant at St. Joseph's Church, East Rutherford, NJ. He also served as an assistant at Sacred Heart Church, Rochelle Park, NJ from 1967-69. In 1969 he came to St. Francis of Assisi Church, New York City, as local moderator for the Secular Franciscan fraternities.

In 1970, he returned to St. Joseph's Church, East Rutherford, NJ, as coordinator of the parochial team ministry of Franciscan friars. After six years, he was appointed in 1976 as assistant to the president at Siena College in Loudonville, NY, serving until 1979. He then became pastor of St. Joseph's Church in West Milford, NJ. In 1985 he undertook a one-year theological sabbatical at the Franciscan house of studies in Canterbury, England.

Upon returning in the summer of 1986, he was appointed an associate pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church, New York City. At the friary there, finding many "Michaels" on the staff, he decided to change the spelling of his name to Mychal. Only a few days after arriving at St. Francis, he responded to a call to celebrate Mass in the hospital room of New York police officer Steven McDonald, who had been critically wounded during an investigation of a youth in Central Park. Father Mychal and the McDonald family soon became devoted friends. Among their good-will travels, Father Mychal accompanied Detective McDonald on visits to Northern Ireland in 1998, 1999 and 2000 to encourage reconciliation.

In 1992, upon the death of Fr. Julian Deeken, OFM, a Franciscan friar who had served as one of the Catholic chaplains for the New York Fire Department, Father Mychal accepted an invitation to serve temporarily in his place. Fr. Mychal was named chaplain officially in 1994 to serve the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

When TWA Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff from New York in July 1996 and fell into the Atlantic off Long Island, Father Mychal helped counsel the families and friends of the victims every day for three weeks and worked to arrange a permanent memorial at the site. He had since returned every summer to offer a memorial service and comfort the families.

Over the years, Father Mychal won the hearts of the firefighters and their families by his charismatic Irish personality and warm Franciscan outreach to them in all their needs – baptisms, weddings, funerals, hospital visits – wherever and whenever he was sought. He was also active in a diverse ministry to various groups throughout the Metropolitan area.

More than 2,800 people attended the Mass of Christian Burial for Father Mychal on Saturday, September 15 at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Manhattan. Father Mychal was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, NJ. He is survived by two sisters, Erin McTernan and Dympna Jessich.

More:
http://www.mychalsm essage.org/ aboutfrm/ aboutfrm. htm




Children's Book:
He Said Yes
The Story of Father Mychal Judge
written by Kelly Ann Lynch
illustrated by M. Scott Oatman
A true story about the remarkable life and untimely death of Father Mychal Judge, He Said Yes tells how an ordinary boy from Brooklyn became an extraordinary Franciscan priest and the beloved New York City Fire Department chaplain who gave his life for his friends on September 11, 2001.

More:
http://www.mychalsm essage.org/ aboutmm/share/ book.htm
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
__._,_.___