FDNY chaplain Father Mychal Judge – “The Fireman’s Friar” – continued to offer absolution, prayers, and assistance in the lobby of the WTC as death rained all around him, until his own death, felled by flying debris when the south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m.

In his role as official fire chaplain, Father Judge rushed to the scene at the WTC, where he administered Last Rites to the dead lying on the streets. As firefighters rushed into the inferno, Father Judge was pronouncing absolution, administering the Sacrament of the Sick and Last Rites, knowing they would not return. When commanders gave orders to evacuate the building, Father Judge refused to abandon the hundreds of firefighters still trapped inside saying, “My work here is not finished”. A NYPD lieutenant found Father Judge’s body in the rubble and, along with two firemen and two civilians, gently carried him body through the dust and smoke to nearby St. Peter’s Church, and lovingly laid him on the altar, covering him with a sheet on which they placed his stole and his fire badge. Then they knelt down and thanked God before rushing back to continue their work.

Father Judge’s death had come just after anointing a fallen firefighter on the plaza outside, before entering the building. He was designated as Victim 0001 because his was the first body recovered from the scene, his point of death, some say, was so the fallen would be ready to meet their maker.

Besides being the FDNY chaplain, Father Judge was well known as a wonderful ranconteur, for his compassion and humor, for ministering to the homeless, the hungry, recovering alcoholics (he himself was 23 years sober), people with AIDS, the sick, injured, immigrants, and those alienated by the Church.

Father Judge was embraced as an example of martyrdom through this photograph, a redemptive tableau described as an “American Pietà”.