Newsday
September 7, 2006

A "Saint's" life
By Gene Seymour

"The Saint of 9/11" is a touching portrait of a heroic, if flawed, man.

Hagiography is what's threatened by a movie titled "Saint of 9/11," and for much of its first half hour, that's pretty much what you get. This life story of Father Mychal Judge begins at the end of its subject's life -- which came on Sept. 11, 2001 while Judge was performing his duties as chaplain for New York City's fire department. Solemnity and grief accompany this account, making this movie almost indistinguishable from other 9/11 movies. At first anyway.

Gradually, deftly, filmmaker Glenn Holsten reveals the many layers of Judge's crowded and, it turns out, indispensable life. Born in Brooklyn of Irish parents, Judge grew up to become a blend of grand contradiction and compulsive empathy. A Franciscan monk and a recovering alcoholic, Judge was also gay and proud: He kept his sexuality somewhat beneath the radar among firefighters, but became a fiercely engaged advocate for AIDS patients as well as society's disenfranchised and addicted.

What emerges from the testimony of friends, fellow activists and priests is a portrait of a ruminative, deeply sensitive man who channeled his own vulnerability to pain and need towards an exhilarating sense of mission. Judge's electromagnetic impact on those he personally encountered is reflected in the faces of everyone who speaks in this film, whether it's an outpatient, former fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen or Hilary Rodham Clinton, speaking at Judge's funeral.

You leave this handsomely furnished wake of a movie feeling, as did the NYPD officer who found his body, that you wished you'd known Judge in life. You also come away with a bracing recognition that grace and perfection don't always share the same corners of the soul -- which doesn't and shouldn't prevent you from doing good works for others.