The first recorded victim of 9/11 was a gay Catholic priest

Twenty-five years after Father Mychal Judge died inside the World Trade Center, the life behind one of the day’s defining images still challenges the Catholic Church’s ideas about who may be holy.In the photograph, almost everything is gray.Five men, their faces and clothing coated in ash, carry the body of the Rev. Mychal Judge through the ruins of the World Trade Center. His head falls to one side. His black clerical clothes and white Roman collar remain visible against the surrounding carnage.Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton’s image would travel around the world and become known as the “modern Pietà,” after Michelangelo’s sculpture of Mary cradling the body of Jesus. Before most people knew Judge’s name, they knew his death.Related: Supporters Push for Gay Priest Who Died on 9/11 to Be Made a Saint Judge, the beloved Franciscan chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, was designated Victim No. 1 of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He was not the first of the nearly 3,000 people killed that morning. His was the first body formally recorded by New York City’s medical examiner.Twenty-five years later, that bureaucratic number and sacred-looking photograph still threaten to flatten him into a symbol. Judge was also a recovering alcoholic, a tireless minister to people with HIV and AIDS, a friend to homeless New Yorkers, and a gay man who found room inside himself for an identity his church still struggled to hold.“I was talking to some younger colleagues who were working with me in a gay Catholic organization who had not heard of Father Judge because they were like nine years old when 9/11 happened,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ+ Catholic organization New Ways Ministry, tells The Advocate.“It felt like he needed to be remembered as an important part of that tragic day.”DeBernardo is the author of the 2021 biography Mychal Judge: Take Me Where You Want Me to Go. After studying Judge’s life, he sees no separ