05/09/2006
Mychal Judge: The Saint of 9/11
The Saint of 9/11, a new documentary about Father Mychal Judge, who worked tirelessly in New York to help others overcome addiction, poverty, and personal struggles before he became a symbol of the selfless heroes in the WTC attacks, makes the case for Judge's Sainthood, though the actual canonization process can take years.
It premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival. You can watch the trailer here.
Andrew Sullivan recently wrote a nice post on the film:
"For me, his ministry to people with AIDS in the very early days means the most. We forget how terrifying HIV was in the early and mid 1980s, how patients would be quarantined in dark rooms, abandoned by their families, with their meals rolled into their rooms on trolleys. From the beginning, Mychal did as Jesus did and walked right in and kissed these frightened souls on the lips. If they recoiled from the sight of a priest - gay men at that time saw the church as an alien, hostile entity - he would persist in silence. He would simply bring holy oils, take a chair to the bottom of their hospital beds, and massage their bony, cold, pain-racked feet. He seemed to express no anger, just a kind of suspended joy in the moment, a joy he found resuscitated by the fact of the resurrection and the intercession of Our Lady."
Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal Bishop who recently went through rehab for alcoholism, commented on the controversy surrounding Judge's homosexuality, which struck a personal chord: "We all have closets of one kind or another. I think the danger in any religion is to take someone who is a leader in a faith tradition and put him on a pedestal and somehow he is not supposed to have any kind of a struggle."
New Documentary Makes Case for the Saint of 9/11 [reuters]
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 10:45 AM EST by Andy in Film | Permalink
Like it?
Subscribe to FREE Towleroad daily headlines with our RSS feed!
RECENT STORIES:
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
One of the most impressive things I know about about Judge was that he would visit AIDS patients (in the earlier days of the disease in the U.S.) and to ease their nervousness and make them feel like they were on the same level as him he would massage their feet to relax them. That IS "saintly."
Posted by: Joe Tynan | May 9, 2006 1:35:34 PM
SANTO SUBITO!
Posted by: Liam | May 9, 2006 1:42:03 PM
It'll never happen. A) the Catholic church is one of the most homophobic institutions in the world. B) Sainthood is based on more than being a selfless "servant of God." There are requirements for visions and miracles and all sorts of spooky hooha. I also don't understand why anyone would want to be declared special by the Catholic church. Let's see, they hate gays, they harbor pedophiles, and they've been responsible for some of the most heinous crimes of the past two millenia--the medieval witch hunts, the Inquisition, and the Crusades, just to name the most glamorous.
Posted by: Tom | May 9, 2006 7:44:39 PM
For any one offended or hurt by people claiming Christ,THIS was a Christian.
Posted by: RC | May 9, 2006 8:37:58 PM
The fact that you don't hear about his AIDS outreach in the earliest days of the disease can be attributed to the religious fundementalists who bouyed the Bush administration and that includes the gay republicans who have tried to paint the republican party as the "party of inclusion".
in 2001, America may not have been able to distinguish between Democrat and Republican on September 11th but we sure remembered how to on September 12th.
Posted by: Chad Hanging | May 10, 2006 1:45:46 AM