"All of a sudden they feel something at their feet and it was Mychal, but he was gone."
Members of the fire department, police department and other first responders carried Fr. Judge's body out of the wreckage, putting his body down first to run as the second tower collapsed, then again to temporarily rest it at St. Peter's Church. Members of the fire department brought it back to the firehouse where Fr. Keenan saw his friend and prayed over his body.
Fr. Mychal Judge was later listed as Victim 0001 – the first death certificate processed on 9/11.
Despite the sudden and unexpected nature of the attacks, Fr. Keenan told CNA that in the weeks before his friend's death, Fr. Judge had a sense his death was near.
"He just had a sense that the Lord Jesus was coming." On several occasions, Fr. Keenan said, Fr. Judge had told him, "You know, Chrissy, the Lord will be coming for me," and made other references to his death.
"He had a sense that the Lord was coming for him."
The grueling aftermath
"There was no playbook for how you deal with something in the wake of something like that," Fr. Madigan said of the aftermath of 9/11. Personally, Fr. Madigan told CNA, he was well-prepared spiritually and mentally for the senseless nature of the attacks.
"I understand that innocent people get killed tragically all the time," he said, noting that while the scale was larger and hit so close to home, "life goes on." For many others that he ministered to, however, "it did shake their foundations, their trust and belief in God."
While the attacks changed the focus of his ministry as a parish priest at the time, they also posed logistical challenges for ministry and aid: St. Peter's usual congregation of people who worked in and around the World Trade Center vanished nearly overnight. Instead, the whole area was cordoned off for rescue workers and recovery activities as the city began the long task of sorting and removing the debris and rubble.
In addition, a small chapel named St. Joseph's Chapel, which was cared for and administered by St. Peter's, was used by FEMA workers as a base for recovery activities during the weeks after the attack. During that time, the sanctuary was damaged and several structures of the chapel, including the pulpit, chairs and interior, were rendered unusable. According to Fr. Madigan, FEMA denies that it ever used the space.
Still, the priests at St. Peter's saw it as their duty to minister to those that were there – whoever they were.
"The parish, the church building itself was open that whole time," he said, saying that anyone who had clearance to be within the Ground Zero area was welcome at the church. In the weeks after the attacks, the parish acted as sanctuary, as recovery workers who were discovering body parts and other personal effects "would come in there just to sort of try to get away from that space."
"Myself and one of the other priests would be out there each day just to be able to talk to anyone who wants to talk about what's going on," he added. "We'd celebrate Mass in a building nearby."
Today, Fr. Madigan has been reassigned to another parish in uptown Manhattan, and St. Peter's now has found a new congregation as new residents have moved into the neighborhoods surrounding the former World Trade Center site.
Only two months after the attack, Fr. Keenan took on the role of his old friend, Fr. Judge: he was installed as chaplain for the 14,000 first responders of the the FDNY.
Immediately, Fr. Keenan joined the firefighters in their task of looking for the remains – even the most minute fragments – of the more than 2,600 people killed at the World Trade Center. "The rest of the recovery process then was for nine months trying to find the remains."
For the firefighters in particular, there was a drive to find the remains of the 343 firefighters killed at the World Trade Center and help bring closure to the family members. "You always bring your brother home, you never leave them on the battlefield," Fr. Keenan said.
The resulting amount of work, as well as the "intense" tradition among firefighters to attend all funerals for members killed in the line of duty meant that the job became all-consuming, with all one's spare time spent at the World Trade Center site. Sometimes, Fr. Keenan said, he would attend as many as four, five, or six funerals or memorials a day – and many families held a second funeral if body parts were recovered from the site.
"Here are the guys, overtime, going to all the funerals, working spare time on the site looking for recovery, and taking care of the families," he said. "I was 24/7, 365 for 26 months."
In addition, Fr. Keenan and the rest of the FDNY worked inside "this incredible toxic brew" of smoke, chemicals and fires that burned among the ruins at Ground Zero for months.
"I would be celebrating Mass at 10:00 on a Sunday morning down there," he recalled, "and just 30 feet from where I'm celebrating Mass at the cross, the cranes are lifting up the steel."
While both buildings had contained more than 200 floors of offices, there was "not a trace of a computer, telephones, files, nothing. Everything was totally decimated." Instead, all that was left was steel, dirt and the chemicals feeding the fires that smouldered underground in the footprint of the towers.
"The cranes are lifting up the steel and the air is feeding the fires underneath, and out of that is coming these incredible colors of yellow, black and green smoke, and we all worked in the recovery process." The experience working the recovery at the World Trade Center site is one that Fr. Keenan considers a "gift" and an "honor."
"It was an incredible experience really," he said.
Fr. Keenan recounted a conversation the firefighters had with him a few days after he was commissioned. After pledging to "offer my life to protect the people and property of New York City," the other firefighters told their new chaplain "we know you're ours, don't you forget that every one of us is yours," promising to stand by their new shepherd. "I'm the most loved and cared for person in the world and who has it better than me?"
While the formal recovery process has ended and a new tower, One World Trade Center, stands just yards from the original site of Ground Zero, the experience – and the chemicals rescue workers came in contact with for months – still affect the firefighters.
In 2016 alone, "we put 17 new names on the wall," said Fr. Keenan, "who died this past year from of the effects of 9/11." He explained that in the years following the attack, thousands of rescuers and first responders – including Fr. Keenan himself – have developed different cancers and illnesses linked to their exposure at the World Trade Center site. In fact, at the time of the interview in 2016, Fr. Keenan had just returned from a screening for the more than 20 toxic chemicals the responders were exposed to. He warned that the "different cancers and the lung problems that are emerging are just the tip of the iceberg," and worried that as time progressed, other cancers and illnesses linked to the attack recovery would emerge.
The first responders are also dealing with the psychological fallout of the attacks among themselves, Fr. Keenan said, though many are dealing with it in their own way, and with one another.
Looking back, Fr. Keenan told CNA he still finds it difficult to express the experience to others or to make sense of what it was like when he would go down into "the pit" to work alongside the firefighters and other first responders. "The only image I had as time went on and I asked 'how do I make sense of this as a man of faith?' is that it was like I was descending into hell and I was seeing the face of God on the people that were there."
The same image had come to his mind to make sense of taking care of patients with AIDS in the 1990s, he said, even though nothing can fully make sense of events like these.
"I was like a midwife to people in their birthing process from life to death to new life," he recalled. "All I can do is be present there, they have to do the work, I can be present there, I can pray with them."
"That's how in faith I kind of sort of comprehended it."
This article was originally published on CNA Sept. 11, 2016.
Adelaide Mena was the DC Correspondent for Catholic News Agency until 2017 and is a 2012 graduate of Princeton University.