Memories of Father Mychal Judge live on 25 years after 9-11

The Church of St. Francis of Assisi drew an intimate group of approximately 40 worshipers on the eve of the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

The evening of prayerful remembrance and conversation centered around Father Mychal Judge, the first identified victim of the nearly 3,000 victims on the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Michael Daly, a columnist for the New York Daily News at the time of 9-11, led the Sept. 10 conversation and was one of many to call Father Judge a friend.

Daly, who lost several friends in the 2001 attack, recalls his knees going out when he learned of Father Judge’s passing.

Like most, work was what brought Father Judge to the towers the morning of Sept. 11 though he was not clocking into an office job. He was a Franciscan Friar and pastor of the W. 31st Church and for more than a decade was an FDNY chaplain. He rushed to the World Trade Center with firefighters from fire house across from the church as soon as he heard the news.

He was inside the lobby of North Tower offering prayers and administering last rites when he was struck and killed by debris. His intact body was then carried out by firefighters and eventually transported by chair to nearby St. Peter’s Church.

A photo of Father Judge’s final journey was captured by a freelance photographer Shannon Stapleton and the offhanded snapshot became one of many famous photos to encapsulate the horrors of 9/11.

Years later Daly — a veteran New York reporter—penned a 2008 book about his dear friend. “The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge” details Judge’s journey to priesthood.

“I learned a lot about him,” Daly said. “A lot of things I wished I could have just asked him, but I had to spend weeks trying to find out.”

Reflecting on the book at St. Francis of Assisi, Daly shared some of his favorite Father Judge memories spanning from stories about his childhood to tales about his time as a chaplain.

“I really loved this guy,” Daly told the group. “I was one of his 9,812 best friends.”

According to Daly, some of these friends happened to live on the street where Father Judge knew the homeless by name and always offered a dollar — folded neatly in half to feel less like a handout.

Father Judge also became a known as a friend and advocate for AIDS patients during a time when most were “scared to catch” what was regarded as an ungodly disease.

As told by Daly, Father Judge once received a call from a man whose partner was on his death bed and terrified that “God hated him.”

Father Judge rushed over and immediately embraced the dying man, bringing him into his arms and rocking him during his final moments.

“He was outspoken about being loved, whether (or not) you’re gay, God created you,” parishioner Linda Spartonos said. “Let me tell you, the world is a lesser place without him.”

Spartonos, who lives a block away from St. Francis of Assisi, also called “Father Mike” a friend and remembers always stopping to say hello when she saw the friar outside the church in usual upbeat form: smoking a cigarette in a traditional brown Franciscan habit and sneakers.

“He just brought so much joy to what he was doing,” Spartonos recalled.

“At the time I was in my 20s, and I was pretty much a midnight mass and Easter Catholic and I said ‘you know, when I get really serious about this, I know where I’m going to go, because Father Mychal’s there, and if this is the kind of people that the the friars are like, this is where I want to go.’”

Over a decade after his passing, Spartonos remembered Father Judge’s joy as she started consistently attending mass. To this day, she credits her late friend with bringing her back to church and is honored to help keep his legacy alive at the parish.

As a testament to his wide-reaching friendship, Father Judge’s funeral brought more than 3,000 mourners to St. Francis of Assisi on Sept. 15, 2001. Among them was then-President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton who Judge had met just years earlier at a White House prayer breakfast during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

According to Daly, Father Judge was said to make the First Lady laugh at the Sept. 11, 1998 breakfast when he remarked how lucky she was to live in such a place.

Laughter became a common theme in most of Daly’s stories, and was appropriately the reason he first met Father Judge. Their friendship started at a hospital where they were individually visiting firefighters recovering from a Watt Street fire.

While not typically a place to crack jokes, Father Judge was his usual self and Daly immediately recognized Father Judge’s ability to find light in the darkness as he got to know the friar eliciting laughs from hospitalized firefighters.

More than two decades since his passing, Father Judge’s legacy is carried on not only by stories from loved ones, but by a building fund launched last year in his honor. The Father Mychal Judge OFM Building Fund aims to help restore and renovate three church buildings where the beloved friar spent much of his time.

With the 2026 anniversary weighing heavy on the hearts of many New Yorkers, a newly unveiled 9/11 memorial at St. Francis of Assisi serves to memorialize Father Judge and all the fellow lives lost on 9/11.

“It’s the 25th anniversary, and a whole generation has come after that,” Spartonos said. “This is just history for them.”