i missed this article

but a friend sent it along (thank you so VERY much j). i remember reading about reverend judge right after 9/11. i remember feeling such pain and sorrow for this fallen man. i am a VERY lapsed catholic - so far so i am pagan. i think i would have enjoyed speaking with the reverend on many subjects though. i think he would have understood me but much more, accepted me.

The Rev. Mychal F. Judge, a fire chaplain, was fatally struck by falling debris soon after administering last rites to a firefighter at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Admirers of Fallen 9/11 Hero Disdain the Vatican's Likely Plan to Bar Gays as Priests

By ANDY NEWMAN
Published: September 25, 2005

The Rev. Mychal F. Judge, the Fire Department chaplain who died in the rubble of 9/11, was, and still is, one of the most widely loved Roman Catholic priests in New York City's recent history. For 40 years, Father Judge tirelessly ministered to firefighters, their grieving widows, AIDS patients, homeless people, Flight 800 victims' families and countless others. At his funeral, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani called him a saint, a sentiment that admirers have followed up by campaigning for his canonization. A simple prayer that Father Judge wrote has been circulated around the world and attached to thousands of donations to the needy. Pope John Paul II accepted the gift of his helmet. Father Judge was also, according to many of his friends of all sexual orientations, a homosexual. A celibate homosexual, he told friends, but a homosexual nonetheless. And reports last week that the Vatican is likely to try to bar gay men, even celibate ones, from the priesthood stirred anger among those who revere his memory. The former city fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen, a close friend of Father Judge's, said Thursday that excluding men of his caliber from the priesthood would be simply "a shame." Mr. Von Essen, a married, practicing Catholic who said that Father Judge came out to him years before his death, added, "To sacrifice your life to God and try to do so much good every day and to be prevented from doing that - it's no wonder they can't get anyone to join the church to become a priest or a nun." On Thursday, Andrew Sullivan, the outspokenly gay and Catholic journalist, posted on his Web site an oft-reprinted photograph of Father Judge's limp body being carried off by firefighters on 9/11 minutes after he had given last rites to one of their own. Above it was the sardonic headline "Unfit for the Priesthood."....................