September 2, 2009

Kennedy laid to rest at Arlington cemetery after Boston funeral

By Catholic News Service

BOSTON (CNS)—Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was mourned at a Boston church and laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery Aug. 29, amid words of comfort from the Book of Wisdom, Paul’s Letter to the Romans and the Gospel of Matthew, and recollections of his life by his sons, his pastor, President Barack Obama and Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick.

During the funeral Mass for the senator at Boston’s Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Father Mark Hession, pastor of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, Mass., linked the Scripture readings—chosen by Kennedy, his wife, Vicki, and their family—with elements of the senator’s own life and faith.

“St. Paul states our case with his usual confidence,” Father Hession noted of the reading that opens: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?”

Father Hession said “that confidence (that) the triumph of life over death is rooted in the central belief of Christian faith” is the conviction on which all Christian faith is built—”that Christ who passed through death to new life will, as he promised, lead us through death to new life as well.”

“We hold the life of Sen. Kennedy with reverence and respect,” Father Hession continued. “We also recognize that like all of us his life has a destiny beyond history, destiny of risen life in the kingdom of God.”

Later, during the burial service at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Cardinal McCarrick, Washington’s retired archbishop, read excerpts of letters exchanged by Kennedy and Pope Benedict XVI in the last few weeks.

Kennedy, who died late Aug. 25 at the age of 77, stood firmly on the side of the Catholic Church on a wide range of issues from immigration reform to the minimum wage during his 47 years as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. But the youngest son of one of the nation’s most famous Catholic families ran into criticism from leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church for his stand on abortion. He opposed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, supported Roe v. Wade and was a chief sponsor of legislation to limit protests outside abortion clinics and to permit the use of federal funds for research projects using fetal tissue.

Kennedy died at 11:30 p.m. at his Massachusetts home on Cape Cod after a yearlong battle with a malignant brain tumor. His family was at his side, as was a Catholic priest, Father Patrick Tarrant.