Victim 0001 was a gay Franciscan
He was the first recorded victim of 9/11 and a gay priest. Even so, Mychal Judge will not be made a saint.
On 11 September 2001, Mychal Judge rushed to the burning World Trade Center. The Franciscan was chaplain to the New York Fire Department and had been a priest for four decades, and wherever his people were on duty, he was too. He was in the lobby of the North Tower when the South Tower collapsed. Debris shot into the hall. Judge was killed instantly, aged sixty-eight.
Five men carried him out of the dust and laid him in front of the altar of a nearby church. The photo of the lifeless priest went round the world. In the count of New York's victims he was later given the number 0001.
After his death, close friends made public that Mychal Judge was gay. He lived celibately, as his vows required. In the fire department he was not out. But he confided in the fire commissioner, who was struggling with his own son's homosexuality. One firefighter is said to have responded to the news drily that in that case he had just had his first gay friend.
Judge knew homeless people by their first names. He cared for people with AIDS at a time when even hospital staff hardly wanted to touch them. The New York journalist Andy Humm remembers seeing him in his brown habit at rallies for gay causes and in the fight against AIDS.
After the attacks, Judge was celebrated as a hero, and he was repeatedly proposed for sainthood. The queer Catholic organisation New Ways Ministry supported these efforts. On the twenty-fifth anniversary, the Washington Blade now reports that these efforts have failed. The necessary support from Catholic authorities was lacking, including that of his own order.