The body of a Christian priest was carried from the ruins of the World Trade Center by five men. His head had suffered fatal trauma from the collapse. His white clerical collar was still visible. The photograph would become one of the defining images of September 11. Today is September 11, 2026, twenty-five years since that terrible morning. And tonight I want to tell you the story of Father Mychal Judge. It began on an almost impossibly beautiful September morning in New York City. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Firefighters, police officers and paramedics began moving toward something nobody yet fully understood. And so did a priest. Father Mychal Judge was a Catholic priest, a Franciscan friar, and chaplain to the New York City Fire Department. He was 68 years old. He grew up in Brooklyn, the son of Irish immigrants, and entered the Franciscans as a young man. His ministry took him among the homeless, people struggling with addiction, people dying of AIDS, grieving families, and the firefighters he loved deeply. He knew suffering himself. Father Mychal was a recovering alcoholic. By 2001, the firefighters of New York were his family. So when the call came that morning, Father Mychal left St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street and went downtown with them. He entered the North Tower. Inside were smoke, shattered glass, injured and frightened people, and firefighters preparing to climb into an inferno while thousands desperately tried to escape. Father Mychal did what a priest does. He prayed. He blessed. He stayed with the dying. He administered the last rites to a fallen firefighter. Then, at 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed. The force of the collapse blasted debris into the lobby of the North Tower. Father Mychal was thrown backward and suffered fatal blunt-force injuries to his head. He died among the people he had come to serve. Five men carried his body out: firefighters Christian Waugh and Zachary Vause, NYPD Lieutenant William Cosgrove, rescue worker Kevin Allen, and civilian John Maguire. Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton raised his camera. The photograph he captured has sometimes been called an American Pietà. A dead priest being carried through the devastation in the arms of other men. They brought Father Mychal’s body to nearby St. Peter’s Church and laid him before the altar. Later, the medical examiner assigned him the designation Victim 0001. Not because he was necessarily the first person to die that morning. He was the first body formally recovered and certified. Victim 0001 was a priest. There is something about that which has stayed with me. Twenty-five years ago, while I sat with my parents in Minnesota watching those towers fall, I was not yet a priest. I did not know Father Mychal Judge. But looking back now, as a priest myself, I realize that somewhere inside that devastation, one of my fraternal brothers had done what a priest is supposed to do. He showed up. He went where people were suffering. And he stayed. The Roman Catholic Church has not canonized Father Mychal Judge, and no formal cause for his canonization has yet been opened, although many have called for one. So I am going to stretch across those ecclesial boundaries tonight. I will not declare what the Church has not declared. But I will ask a Christian brother who died serving his people to pray with us before the throne of God. Father Mychal Judge, Christian priest, Franciscan friar, chaplain, brother: Please pray for us. Pray for the dead of September 11. Pray for their families. Pray for the firefighters, police officers, paramedics and ordinary people who carried one another through hell that day. Pray for our country. And pray for those of us given the terrible and beautiful responsibility of bringing Christ into places where people are suffering. Father Mychal Judge, pray for us. Amen.