The Irish-American Franciscan friar and chaplain of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) rushed to the Twin Towers after the first plane struck.
As he had countless times before, he joined the firefighters he served, offering prayers and comfort amid unfolding tragedy.
Twenty-five years later, he is officially recorded as the first victim of the attacks that claimed the lives of 2,997 people.
Fleeting snatches of his final minutes, praying and administering last rites in the lobby of the North Tower, were captured by a television crew.
At 9.59am, the South Tower collapsed, sending an avalanche of twisted steel, shattered glass and pulverised concrete crashing across Lower Manhattan.
The force swept dust and debris through the North Tower lobby, where Fr Judge and emergency responders had gathered.
Retired FDNY firefighter Chris Waugh, a friend of Fr Judge, recalls the moment vividly.
“Tower Two came down and all the debris blew through the lobby and knocked everybody down,” he said. “We were all on the floor of the lobby waiting for it to clear because we couldn’t see anything. When it cleared, that’s when we saw Fr Judge on the floor.”
Reflecting on the moments before the tower fell, Mr Waugh said he thought Fr Judge had sensed what lay ahead for him.
“I think when he was standing there, he knew what was going to happen,” he said. “He knew it was coming. I think he had to be the first to go and be there for all the others who were coming.”
Four men – Mr Waugh, fellow firefighter Zachary Vause, police officer Bill Cosgrove and Kevin Allen of New York’s Office of Emergency Management – placed Fr Judge’s body in a chair and carried him outside.
As they made their way through the dust and rubble, they were joined by John Maguire, a civilian who worked in the World Trade Centre.
The photo, seen around the world, showed the men covered in ash, with exhaustion etched on their faces. Fr Judge lay slumped in the chair, dead but serene.
Those men, strangers to each other, carried the chaplain almost four blocks to St Peter’s Catholic Church, where he was laid on the floor before the altar.
Born Robert Emmett Judge in Brooklyn in 1933, Fr Judge was the son of Irish immigrants from Co Leitrim. His father, Michael Judge, came from Keshcarrigan, while his mother, Mary Fallon, was from Drumkeeran. The couple had three children: Robert, his twin sister Dympna and their older sister Erin.
Known for his warmth, humour and deep compassion, Fr Judge devoted his life to serving others.
A recovering alcoholic, he was an imperfect hero, but he was remarkably kind and generous. He counselled countless other addicts and administered to people living with Aids at a time when many were shunned.
He was gregarious, loved singing Irish ballads and staying up late, and was a vocal supporter of greater acceptance of gay people within the Catholic Church. Although those closest to him knew he was gay, he was not open about his sexuality to everyone he knew.
After his death, his twin said he had found keeping his sexuality private difficult, and struggled with the feeling that people never fully knew him.
Fr Judge became a fire department chaplain in 1992. It was a role he loved.
He was remembered by one firefighter as “a strapping guy, with big hands and thick, white hair and a deep voice, like a man’s man, you know?
“I could picture him chopping down a door with an axe. He would love to do that, too. He’d love to get in on the drills. He fit right in.”
Those who knew him best said there was something fitting about how he died. He always wanted to be in the middle of the action and did not want to grow old. He asked a fellow priest to shoot him if he ever needed to be placed in their order’s infirmary.
Franciscan friar Fr Kevin Mullen, a close friend, said: “I felt that if Mychal was given his choice of how he would go out of this world, that would have been his choice. To be with the firefighters, literally going with his boots on.”
Another friend, Fr Michael Duffy, recalled an incident years earlier when both men were young priests in New Jersey.
A man had locked himself in the attic of his home and was threatening to shoot his wife and baby.
When Fr Duffy arrived at the scene, which was swarming with police cars, fire trucks and television crews, he saw a familiar figure climbing a ladder to the attic. Fr Judge, in his long brown Franciscan robe and sandals, went in through the window and disappeared.
“We waited five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Sweating bullets, waiting for that gunshot,” Fr Duffy said. “The next thing you know, the front door opens and out comes the wife holding the baby, then the man with the gun, and Mychal Judge with his arm around him.”
Retired NYPD officer Bill Cosgrove, one of the men who had carried Fr Judge from the North Tower, did not know the friar while he was alive.
“He’s always been on my mind ever since then, because it’s my firm belief that the only reason I’m here today is because of him,” he said.
“Everybody you see in that picture was saved. Had he not been there, I would have been looking for other people. When the North Tower fell, I would have been right in the middle of it.”
A French documentary crew captured some of the last moments of Fr Judge’s life.
Fr Duffy said the footage showed Fr Judge standing by a window, watching as people leapt from the inferno raging in the upper floors above.
“If you look closely at that film, you’ll see his lips moving,” Fr Duffy said. “He wasn’t someone who talked to himself. He was praying and absolving people as they fell to their deaths.”
The words of Fr Judge’s final homily proved prophetic. Delivered on September 10, 2001, during the rededication of Engine 73, Ladder 42 in the Bronx, it captured the spirit by which he lived.
“You do what God has called you to do,” he said. “You show up, you put one foot in front of another, you get on that rig, you go out to do the job, which is a mystery and a surprise.
“You have no idea when you get on that rig, no matter how big the call, no matter how small, what God’s calling you to. But he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us.”
One February evening in 2000, as daylight faded over the village of Keshcarrigan, Co Leitrim, a local farmer received an unexpected knock at his door.
Fr Mychal Judge was searching for his father’s ancestral home. He had found it.
Little remained of the old house beyond a crumbling gable wall.
From it, Fr Judge removed a stone and carried it back to New York.