As difficult as it is for me to believe, this September marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11. One of the people we lost that day was Mychal Judge, the late New York City Fire Department Chaplain and a Catholic priest. Like so many New Yorkers are, Fr. Judge was an iconoclast. Despite having taken a vow of celibacy, he was a gay man in a long-term relationship with an active AIDS ministry. He also had a curious habit of going to FDNY celebrations and proclaiming to all the firefighters there (and anyone else who happened to be present), “All your sins are forgiven!” By widespread account, he said it with real feeling and deep conviction.
Fr. Judge had repeatedly been told to stop that public practice, since as a priest, he was beholden to Catholic sacrament of reconciliation, which required individuals to make their confession and perform penance. But he persisted in it, explaining that he never wanted a single firefighter to doubt forgiveness itself. His last FDNY event was the last for several others attending it as well, and at it, he again declared: “All your sins are forgiven!” Not too long afterwards, he became the first certified mortality at the World Trade Center; the photo of first responders carrying the chaplain’s body out of the North Tower soon appeared in news outlets around the world.
In the years since his death, many have lobbied for his canonization as a matryr for the faithful. Fr. Judge did not evacuate the tower when he was told to do so because he knew that there were injured firefighters inside who would want to receive last rites, as an assurance that they had been granted the absolution of sin and the blessing of apostolic pardon. The seriousness of his commitment to extending others forgiveness was such that he would run in to a burning building to promise it to them. Although the lobbying for Fr. Judge has continued a couple of decades now, there is still official cause for his sainthood in the Roman Catholic church.
Whether Fr. Judge will eventually be sainted remain an open question, but whether he himself was saintly seems to me a question that has already been decided. These days, we could all use a patron saint of forgiveness. We live in particularly unforgiving times.
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