America:At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington this week President George Bush invoked Father Mychal Judge, a New York City Fire Department chaplain who died at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. The president noted that Judge, a Franciscan priest whose parents were from Co Leitrim, had inspired a charity called Mychal's Message, which distributes needed items to the poor and homeless.
With each gift comes a card with Judge's personal prayer: "Lord, take me where you want me to go, let me meet who you want me to meet, tell me what you want me to say, and keep me out of your way."
No victim of 9/11 has been more celebrated than Judge, who is the subject of at least two biographies and two films.
A recovering alcoholic who befriended the poor and ministered to people with Aids in the 1980s and 1990s, he died after rushing to Ground Zero to give the last rites to firefighters there.
The New York firefighters loved Judge and he was devoted to them. He enjoyed wearing his deputy chief's uniform and loved to speed around New York in his fire department car, complete with bells and sirens.
Judge was deeply rooted in his Irish heritage and visited Ireland a number of times, including three trips to the North with Steven McDonald, a New York police detective who was left disabled by a gun attack. Judge and McDonald, who had met and publicly forgiven the man who shot him, brought their message of reconciliation to both communities in the North, including to Drumcree at the height of the tension there.
Since his death, Judge has been described as a saint, and a group of Catholics is even seeking to have him canonised. His relationship with the church's leadership was never easy, however, not least because of the hierarchy's attitude to gays and lesbians.
Judge offered Mass to Dignity, a group of gay Catholics, and he marched with gays and lesbians at the alternative St Patrick's Day parade in Queens when they were excluded from the main New York parade. He told many friends, including firefighters and fellow priests, that he was himself gay.
"I knew he was gay and so many others did. He trusted us and we kind of protected him.
"He was not 'out' in the sense that he would wear it on his sleeve, but neither was he closeted," says Brendan Fay, an Irish-born Catholic gay activist and film-maker.
Fay helped to produce The Saint of 9/11, a documentary about Judge, which includes testimony about the priest's sexuality from many friends and colleagues, including former New York fire commissioner Tom Von Essen.
"I talked to him about being gay a lot. I never had the sense that he was ashamed of being gay. It was definitely something that he didn't want people to know about in the fire department.
"I think that he felt it would compromise his ability to help so many of them if that became something he had to deal with every day," Von Essen says in the film.
News of Judge's sexual orientation came as a surprise to many of his friends and as a shock to some. Dennis Lynch, a long-standing friend of Judge's who helped to arrange his visits to Northern Ireland, thinks it is not true.
"I personally spent weeks at a time with Father Mike where he and I spoke about many personal matters. Not once was there even a suggestion that Father Mike was gay. He was a celibate Catholic priest and nothing more," Lynch wrote in an article which was widely circulated in conservative Catholic circles.
For Lynch, claims that Judge was gay amount to the slandering of a dead man and the hijacking of his memory by activists pursuing a political agenda. He points out correctly that nobody has identified anyone with whom Judge had a sexual relationship.
There is little doubt, however, that Judge told many friends, gay and straight alike, that he was sexually interested in other men and thought of himself as gay. Fay believes that Judge's sexual identity, like his alcoholism, made him a better priest.
"It enabled him to be a better and more effective minister and a much more compassionate person, precisely because of his own struggles and his own sensitivity to prejudice and discrimination," he said.
