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US elite mourns 'lion of Senate' at Kennedy funeral
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US elite mourns 'lion of Senate' at Kennedy funeral
AFP - Sunday, August 30
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AFP) - - Tears flowed Saturday at the grand Catholic funeral for Edward Kennedy, eulogized by President Barack Obama as "the lion of the Senate" and by his son as a tender-hearted hero.
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Obama, three former presidents and the nation's elite gathered at Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to say farewell to the patriarch of America's leading political family.
Obama hailed Kennedy as a "champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party, and the lion of the US Senate."
Kennedy -- whose elder brothers John F. Kennedy and Robert were assassinated in the 1960s -- had triumphed over "more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know," the president said.
After the Mass, presided over by Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley, Kennedy's flag-draped coffin was carried into the driving rain and then flown to Washington on the last leg of his final journey which began Thursday from his Cape Cod home.
The last surviving brother of slain president John F. Kennedy, the late senator was to be buried Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery.
Kennedy's widow Vicki and three generations of the famed Irish-American clan, all dressed in black dresses or dark suits, struggled to contain their emotions as a priest told them that in Catholic faith "sadness is softened with hope."
But the tears flowed freely when Kennedy's son, Ted Kennedy Jr, gave a moving address about his father's tenderness to him during childhood when he had a leg amputated because of cancer.
"He taught us that even our most profound losses are survivable," Kennedy Jr said.
Recounting how his father helped him climb an icy hill with his new prosthetic leg, Kennedy Jr said: "He taught me that nothing is impossible."
"He was not perfect, far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs -- be they his own failings, or ours," Kennedy Jr said.
Edward Kennedy died Tuesday, aged 77, after suffering for more than a year from brain cancer.
Although many Americans disliked his leftist politics, the senator's passing was a national event, signaling the end of a half-century era in which his legendary family was a highly influential force in the Democratic Party.
In front of Arlington cemetery, where Kennedy's slain brothers John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy are buried, police Saturday had erected barricades along the route.
Dozens of people had already gathered to welcome the motorcade bearing Kennedy's body, with the Democratic lion to be laid to rest some 100 feet (30 meters) from his brothers on a green hillside overlooking the US capital.
Tens of thousands of people had queued to view his coffin on Thursday and Friday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, built on Boston's Atlantic shore.
Smaller crowds braved the rain Saturday to line the route of the cortege carrying the flag-draped coffin from the library to the basilica.
Guests at the Mass included almost 50 senators and 100 members of Congress, as well as former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Also present was a range of celebrities including movie actor Jack Nicholson, and figures from the sporting and media worlds.
Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and opera great Placido Domingo provided music at the Mass.
The breadth of national respect for Kennedy was reflected the previous evening in the eclectic mix of guests at a pre-funeral wake held at the JFK library.
Speakers at the wake praised Kennedy as a patriot, legislator, and a man who knew huge privilege but also terrible tragedy.
"Some people born with a famous name live off it. Others enrich names. Teddy enriched his," Democratic Senator Chris Dodd said.
Several senior Republicans who had overcome ideological differences to form a bond with the Senate's leading liberal also attended.
Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator, spoke of his "love" for Kennedy, even if "there are few men with whom I've had less in common."
Obama, who met briefly with Vicki Kennedy ahead of the funeral, was not planning to attend the burial itself, and later arrived back at Martha's Vineyard for the end of a week's vacation.
Kennedy's support of Obama during the presidential election last year was credited with giving the country's first African American president a significant boost in his meteoric rise to power.
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