As journalists, we usually have the luxury of writing about the terrible things that happen to other people without being personally touched by them. That norm was blown away on Sept. 11, 2001, when the priest who married us – Rev. Mychal Judge – was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center.
The photograph of Father Mychal being carried through the rubble by five men, the anguish and weight of their burden etched on their faces, is one of the abiding images of 9/11. It has been compared to a modern day Pieta. For us, it carries the added pain of seeing a familiar face, one that shines out from our wedding photographs, shortly after the moment of death. Ten years later, it still hurts.
Father Mychal was so many things to so many people that it was, perhaps, inevitable that he would become a symbol, even an idol of sorts. To the world, he was the first official casualty of 9/11 – death certificate 0001. To the firefighters who clearly loved him as much as he loved them, Father Mychal, the chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, was a tower of faith, always there for them when things got dangerous or turned tragic.
To New York’s gay community, Father Mychal was a man of compassion and a hero, ministering to those with AIDS back when they were still social pariahs, and attending their funerals. They considered him brave to challenge the church so brazenly; a year before he died, he marched in the first gay-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
To members of his congregation at St. Francis of Assisi Church, on West 31st Street, the Brooklyn-born son of Irish immigrants was the epitome of generosity and compassion, known for giving his coat to a street person, ever ready to listen, and open about his own battles with alcoholism. He was a “street priest.” The altar alone was not enough to hold his interest.
To us, Father Mychal was the spirit of tolerance. In 1994, when his fire department duties left little time for weddings, baptisms and funerals, he found time for us because he knew that most other priests would not. When we asked him why he had agreed to co-officiate with a rabbi at our wedding, where the bride was Jewish, not converting to Catholicism and would not promise to raise the children Catholic, his reply was that there are many roads to God, and who are we to say only one of them is right?
He thought that there should be more mixed-faith marriages. “It breeds tolerance,” he told us when we first met him. It may be that he also enjoyed testing the church’s limits.
“He liked to bend the rules. It used to drive the cardinal insane,” John Porretto, a firefighter who knew Father Mychal, told us the day after he died.
Couples in the market for official interfaith marriages had few options a decade ago, even now. Most took the easy way out and went to Las Vegas or trotted down to city hall for a quickie civil ceremony. We wanted a wedding that incorporated both of our traditions, with both a priest and rabbi. We eventually found Father Mychal through the United Nations chapel in New York.
He was instantly likeable. He was tall and handsome, with thick white hair, an infectious laugh and a mischievous glint in his eye. He was perennially clad in a long, brown Franciscan robe tied at the waist with a rope, and sandals.
When we talked about wedding details, we asked whether he wanted us to send a car to pick him up. No, he said. “I have a fire department cruiser with a siren and I just flick it on whenever I’m late.”
Our wedding was a blast. One of our friends dubbed Father Mychal and the rabbi the wedding’s “best dressed couple.” The rabbi had the booming voice of a Broadway music star. He sang the seven blessings and blessed the rings. But it was Father Mychal who anchored the ceremony, leading us through our wedding vows underneath a chuppah (the traditional Jewish wedding canopy). When he blessed us, he brought God into the house without alienating any of the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or atheists in the audience.
