By Kimberley Heatherington
The offering placed before the altar on Sept. 11, 2001, was unlike any ever seen at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Manhattan’s Financial District: the lifeless body of 68-year-old Franciscan friar and New York City Fire Department Chaplain Father Mychal Judge.

He was killed when the 110 stories of the World Trade Center’s south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., blasting debris into the adjacent north tower lobby where Father Judge was stationed. At the moment, he reportedly was repeatedly praying, “Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!” He was shortly afterward carried from the apocalyptic site.

Some four blocks away, St. Peter’s own roof had been struck by landing gear from one of two hijacked jets smashed into both towers that morning. Father Judge’s journey there was captured in an instantly iconic photo seen worldwide – dust-covered, slumped in a chair and already shockingly pale as he was carried by five men.

Since he lost his life, Father Judge – a friar for 47 years; a priest for 40 – has been hailed as a hero, suggested for sainthood, and praised as a selfless friend not only to first responders, but also to the poor, sick and forgotten of the Big Apple’s sometimes tough streets.

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in recorded history, friends of Father Judge shared memories of his life and loss, and reflected on his legacy.

“People would often say about him, when you talk to him it was like you were the only person before him,” said Father Kevin Mullen, a Franciscan friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe and former president of Siena University in Loudonville, New York, where he currently teaches.

“He engaged you fully; he was not looking around for who he could talk to next. He was fully present to you,” Father Mullen told OSV News. “And that’s what made a difference to a lot of people about Mychal Judge – they could talk to him, bare their souls, share their good news, share their bad news. And he was going to be there for them.”

– ‘He was there. He was present’ –
On the morning of 9/11, Father Mullen, stationed in a parish approximately 15 miles from midtown Manhattan, was responsible for a funeral liturgy.

“I was aware before I started the funeral that the first tower had collapsed,” he recalled. “And when I finished the funeral, I was told the second tower had collapsed. So I knew things were getting worse.”

That afternoon, he heard a radio announcement reporting an injured fire chaplain at the World Trade Center.

“And my gut said, ‘That’s Mychal Judge,’” Father Mullen said. “He was right across the street from a fire station that responded immediately.” The church where Father Judge ministered and the friary where he lived, St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street, neighbored New York City Fire Department Engine 1/Ladder 24.

“And I had no doubt he was down there,” Father Mullen said, referring to the disaster area.

To confirm his suspicion, he called the regional head of his order.

“As soon as he answered the phone – he didn’t even say, ‘Hello, Kevin’ – he just said, ‘It was Mychal.’ And I said, ‘I thought so.’ That’s how I learned.”

Father Mullen said the already crushingly tragic day immediately became painfully personal. But nonetheless, he still found himself certain of one thing.

“I felt that if Mychal was given his choice of how he would go out of this world, that would have been his choice: to be with the firefighters, literally going with his boots on. He was there. He was present.”

– ‘He resided deeper in you than you understood’ –
The first introduction Michael Daly – journalist and author of “The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge” from St. Martin’s Griffin – had to the priest was the sound of his and others’ laughter.

And it was coming from, of all places, a hospital burn unit.

Accompanying Patrick “Paddy” Brown – an FDNY captain who later died on 9/11 – Daly was there in 1994 to visit FDNY Captain John Drennan, who had been critically burned battling an apartment fire.

“So I go in,” Daly recalled, “and there’s all these guys laughing because of something this priest said – and I’m thinking, ‘Who is this guy?’”
On 9/11, Daly, a Catholic, was at the scene of the attack for the New York Daily News when the north tower collapsed. He remembers running for his life as a massive cloud of debris – chokingly dense with pulverized concrete, glass, metal and the contents of countless offices – rolled like a tsunami through the surrounding streets.

He admits he was afterward “hazy about timing and hours and all that.”

But he does know the air had finally cleared when FDNY Deputy Fire Chief Peter Hayden told him Father Judge was dead.
“And my knees just went,” recalled Daly, overwhelmed with shock. “I didn’t expect that; I didn’t know Mychal had been down there. Someone had called over the radio for the fire chaplain earlier. But I didn’t hear any response. And then – he’s gone, you know?”

“I think he just …” Daly paused, searching for the right description. “He resided deeper in you than you understood.”

– ‘A genius priest’ –
Daly described Father Judge walking the streets of New York City in his brown Franciscan habit, greeting homeless people by their first names, praying with them and distributing neatly folded cash.

Daly also recalled Father Judge often worked 16-hour days ministering at blazes and rescues – counseling firemen, their families and victims – and that he gently tended AIDS patients in an era when medical staff would not make physical contact.

After Father Judge’s death, close friends and associates revealed he was gay – but by all accounts, maintained his vow of celibacy. The response of Kevin Shea, a firefighter at FDNY Engine 40/Ladder 35 in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square, apparently typified the reaction of other first responders. “He said,” Daly recalled, “Well, if you tell me Michael Judge was gay, I’ll tell you I just had my first gay friend.”

While not “out” in the fire department, Daly said Father Judge told Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, who was struggling with his son’s gay identity.

“You know, he was a genius priest,” said Daly. “He just was.”

– ‘I sat with his body for about an hour’ –
Father Christopher Keenan, a friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, entered the Franciscans more than 60 years ago at Father Judge’s urging and became a FDNY chaplain after his friend’s death. On 9/11, he was helping in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

About 2 miles from ground zero, St. Vincent’s staff were caring for the dust-caked and dazed people who had outrun the collapse of the towers.

“I was connecting with their families to come pick them up. And about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, it kind of stopped. I left at 5:30 to walk home from 12th to 31st Street,” Father Keenan recalled. “I had a shift of confessions at 6:00. I came out of the hospital, and there’s doctors and nurses and staff with stretchers – still waiting for all the people that never came.”

Father Keenan had been looking for Father Judge.

“So when I arrived at the firehouse across the street from St. Francis of Assisi Church, I asked the guys, had they heard from Mychal? And they said, ‘He died – and his body is in the back of the firehouse here.’ They had set up sheets and cordoned off a section, where his body was in a black bag. And so I sat with his body for about an hour.”

Father Judge had been moved to Engine 1/Ladder 24 after temporarily lying in front of St. Peter’s altar.

“Then the friars came from across the street. And the firefighters gathered that were there … and we friars sang the Blessing of St. Francis … and then an ambulance took him to the morgue.”

Father Keenan noted that six from the firehouse had also died.

– Victim 0001 –
Father Judge was later numbered victim DM (Disaster Manhattan) 0001-01 of 2,753 souls eventually tallied in New York City after the World Trade Towers crumpled into an infernal landscape of fiery and smoking rubble. Father Keenan himself would spend seven months assisting in that rubble with recovery efforts, afterward contracting several forms of cancer.

In Washington that day, 184 were killed when hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Another 40 aboard United Airlines Flight 93 died when a fourth hijacked plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

“The 25th anniversary is going to be a very solemn time,” Father Mullen said. “And I hope we have that consciousness still alive in our country – that this is very, very painful, especially for the families,” he shared.

“Because a lot of people have just taken this event for granted: ‘Well, that’s history – it happened, it’s over,’ he said. “But it’s never over for those families. Never, ever, over.”

(Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.)

By Rob Herbst, The Catholic Week
MOBILE – When Sister Damiana Pickett professed her first religious vows Sept. 8 in Kraków, Poland, it marked another step in a journey of faith that has included conversion, disappointment, perseverance and a call to serve those in need.

The 38-year-old Greenville, Mississippi, native, who once rejected Christianity and did not enter the Catholic Church until age 27, will profess vows of poverty, chastity and obedience with the Congregation of Albertine Sisters Serving the Poor.

For Sister Damiana, formerly Zola Pickett, the path to religious life has hardly been a straight one.

She was raised in a Protestant family and remembers enjoying church as a young girl, particularly singing hymns and learning Bible stories in Sunday school. But by about age 11, she began wrestling with questions about her faith and said she could not find the answers she was seeking.

She eventually rejected Christianity during her teenage and young adult years, a period she said was increasingly affected by alcohol and drug abuse.
That changed Oct. 15, 2015.

Sister Damiana described that night as her “road to Damascus” moment.
“God gave a small whisper of grace into my heart that blinded my understanding with this intense light: He has loved me tremendously from the beginning of time, through every difficulty of my life, and He is always patiently waiting for His children to return to Him,” she said in an email interview.

While she keeps the words she experienced that night between herself and God, Sister Damiana said she came away with one unmistakable realization.
“God wanted me to belong completely to Him,” she said. “I had no idea what that looked like or how to achieve this, but I blindly resolved to try.”

She began attending RCIA (now OCIA) at St. James the Greater Parish in Tupelo, where she credits Father Lincoln Dall with patiently helping her find answers to questions about God, Christian life and prayer.
At the Easter Vigil in 2016, she was confirmed and received her first Holy Communion.

“It was the best moment of my life,” she said. “I truly can’t imagine how my life would be if I had not entered the Church.”

Her journey eventually brought her to the Archdiocese of Mobile.

Sister Damiana moved to Mobile in January 2019 to seriously discern religious life with a community in the archdiocese. She eventually found a parish home at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Chickasaw.

But in 2021, she said she was discouraged from applying to enter the community she had been discerning with after it was determined she was unlikely to do well in its formation program.

The setback left her questioning what she believed God had placed in her heart.|

She credits St. Thomas pastor Father William Saucier with helping her through the disappointment.

“Father William Saucier was incredibly supportive during this time, listening to my pain but always encouraging me to start again,” she said. “Without his support, I don’t think I would have had the courage to go ‘back to square one’ and start contacting other religious communities.”

She did just that.

In January 2022, Sister Damiana entered formation with a contemplative community in Minnesota and said she was happy there. But an encounter with a homeless woman led her to question whether God was calling her elsewhere.

With her superior’s blessing, she began looking for communities whose apostolates involved direct service to those experiencing homelessness.

Her search led her to the Albertine Sisters.

Founded in Kraków in 1891 by St. Brother Albert Chmielowski and Blessed Sister Bernardyna Jabłońska, the Congregation of Albertine Sisters Serving the Poor is an international congregation of pontifical right and part of the Third Order Franciscan tradition.

Its charism, Sister Damiana explained, is to see the suffering Christ in each person and “to pour out our lives doing good for all.”
The sisters serve in shelters and soup kitchens for the homeless and poor, assisted living homes for people with physical or intellectual disabilities and homes for retired priests. They also perform mission work in Bolivia, Argentina and Ukraine. The congregation has three houses in the United States, including its American motherhouse in Hammond, Indiana, near Chicago.
Sister Damiana said reading about the congregation and its founder immediately struck a chord.

“I immediately felt like Saint Brother Albert understood my desires very deeply,” she said.

She contacted the congregation’s American motherhouse and was welcomed for a visit. During the Easter octave in 2023, she left the contemplative community to continue following where she believed God was leading her.

That journey ultimately took her to Kraków and two years in the novitiate.

Her religious name also reflects her desire to serve those who may be overlooked.

In 2020, Sister Damiana worked as a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home and was among the few CNAs who volunteered to work with COVID-positive residents when needed.

During that time, St. Damien of Molokai, who ministered to people with leprosy in Hawaii, became a personal patron.
After joining the Albertines, she said she began reflecting on how the “leprosy” of sin can isolate people from God, others and even themselves.

“When I entered the novitiate and was able to choose my religious name, I knew it had to be Damiana,” she said.

During her first profession, Sister Damiana made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that will be binding for one year. She described poverty as sharing everything she is and has while keeping nothing for herself; chastity as loving God with an undivided heart and seeking Him and His kingdom; and obedience as seeking God’s will while setting aside her own preferences.

“In a certain sense, my religious life is only beginning on the day of my first vows,” she said. “My past two years of novitiate have been a time of preparation to live by these promises.”

Sister Damiana will remain in Kraków following her first profession. When she renews her vows next year, she could receive a new assignment.

For those discerning their own vocation, Sister Damiana recommends daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration, the Rosary and making time for silence with God – even if only for five minutes.

But she has a particular message for those whose vocational journey has included the kind of disappointment she experienced.
“Don’t give up on God’s plan for you,” Sister Damiana said. “Our God turns bottomless oceans into dry land for us to walk across. Don’t listen to your fears; trust in God and let Him show you the path which He has set out for you.”

As her own path leads to the altar in Kraków, Sister Damiana is also asking for prayers.

“Please pray for me, my superiors, and all my sisters, that we may be beacons of hope and instruments of the Holy Spirit for the people we encounter in our lives and ministries.”