CROWDS OF mourners gathered in Boston yesterday along the route of a motorcade that took the body of Senator Edward Kennedy from his home in Hyannis Port to lie in repose at the JFK memorial library.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen will attend a memorial service at the library this evening and a funeral Mass at the basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help tomorrow, where President Barack Obama will deliver a eulogy. All four surviving former US presidents – George W Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Jimmy Carter – plan to be at the Mass.
Mr Kennedy prayed at the basilica on Boston’s Mission Hill every day when his daughter Kara was receiving treatment at a nearby hospital a few years ago.
“Over time, the basilica took on a special meaning for him as a place of hope and optimism,” the senator’s office said.
The church holds 1,500 people and the Mass will, like the other funeral events, be by invitation only. After the service, Mr Kennedy’s body will be flown to Arlington Cemetery outside Washington, to be buried near his brothers, President John F Kennedy and Senator Robert F Kennedy.
Yesterday’s motorcade passed a number of significant sites for the Kennedy family on its 113km (70-mile) journey from Hyannis Port to the library. It passed St Stephen’s Church, where Mr Kennedy’s mother, Rose, was christened and her funeral Mass was celebrated; crossed the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, a park he helped to create in her memory; and passed Faneuil Hall, where Boston mayor Thomas Menino rang the bell 47 times – once for each year Mr Kennedy served in the US Senate.
A military honour guard will stand vigil around the clock at the JFK memorial library as thousands are expected to file past the closed coffin to pay their respects.
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick said yesterday that he would consider complying with Mr Kennedy’s request that state law be changed to allow a temporary successor for his Senate seat to be appointed immediately. “I think that the senator’s made a very reasonable request,” Mr Patrick told ABC News. “I support the idea of a special election, which is provided for in our current law and the senator did as well. Now, having said that, I have to say that our first thoughts today are on the life and the extraordinary achievements of the senator.”
Under Massachusetts law, the seat would remain vacant until at least mid-January, at which point a special election to fill the position would be held. The provision was introduced five years ago by Democrats eager to prevent former governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, from choosing a successor to Senator John Kerry if he had won the 2004 presidential election.
Mr Kennedy wrote to Mr Patrick last month asking for the law to be changed to ensure that Massachusetts had two senators during a crucial legislative session for the Obama administration.
Among those tipped to succeed Mr Kennedy are his wife Vicki, his nephew Joe, congresswoman Niki Tsongas, whose late husband Paul once held Massachusetts’s other Senate seat, and the state’s attorney general, Martha Coakley.