Sup.✌🐦

I’m 35 now. Also here’s the original doodle

Mychal Judge was the son of Irish immigrant parents who grew up in the Great Depression. As a boy, he shined shoes at the New York Penn Station and went to church at St. Francis across the street, where he was inspired by the Franciscan friars and realized he didn't care about material things.

He took vows from the m the Holy Name Order, and then was ordained a priest in 1961. Unfortunately, by the 1970's, Mychal developed alcohol addiction. In 1978, with the help of AA, he became sober.

In 1992, Mychal became the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department.

Mychal was also known in the city for ministering to the homeless, alcoholics, AIDS patients, the sick and injured, the grieving, immigrants, and members of the LGBT+ community. He served anyone who was considered an outsider. Despite being Catholic, he advocated for gay rights and marched in pride parades and events. He worked at New York City's first AIDS ward at St. Claire's Hospital, where he visited patients and attended funerals of those who succumbed to the disease.

Mychal was still working as a fire department chaplain on September 11, 2001. He answered the call with other fire fighters to help save as many people as they could. When the South Tower collapsed, Mychal was killed with many others.

The Philadelphia Weekly took the photograph of his body being carried out of the rubble was dubbed the "American Pieta." He was placed before the altar of St. Peter's Catholic Church before his colleagues from the fire department took him, then he was given over to a medical examiner. He died by blunt force trauma from falling debris, and not by heart attack as others claimed.

After his death, a few of his friends revealed that Mychal was gay. He had been in a romantic relationship with a nurse named Al. Evidence of his identity and feelings were revealed in his diary. A lawyer named Dennis Lynch attempted to smear the revelation of Mychal's sexual orientation as a fabrication and an "attack" against the Catholic Church by "homosexual activists." However, the evidence from Mychal's own diary and testimony from his own friends and associates showed that he was gay. As far as we know, he was still a faithful administer of the faith and lived a life of charity as a friar, priest, and chaplain.

Churches outside the jurisdiction of Rome have already declared Mychal a saint. While his orientation is controversial and seems to be a small hurdle for his canonization process, official cause for sainthood was initiated in 2021.