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On Nov. 25, 1963, a television audience of millions of people around the world prayerfully bid farewell to President John F. Kennedy, as his flag-draped coffin was placed before the sanctuary of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., during the Funeral Mass for the slain president.
Today, almost 50 years later, people come to the cathedral from across the country and around the world, with many wanting to stand at that very spot, where an inlaid marble plaque is inscribed with the words, “Here rested the remains of President Kennedy at the Requiem Mass, Nov. 25, 1963, before their removal to Arlington, where they lie in expectation of a heavenly resurrection.”
Then-Boston Cardinal Richard Cushing, a friend of the Kennedy family, was the main celebrant at the Requiem Mass. He had officiated at the wedding of John and Jacqueline Kennedy.
In a 1966 oral history interview for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Cardinal Cushing said he was “bewildered and shocked” when he had heard the tragic news about the president’s death.
“It was a very, very simple funeral, following as close as possible the services in memory of the martyred Lincoln. No fanfare, everyone bowed in sorrow, tears flowed in abundance,” said Cardinal Cushing, now deceased, in the interview.
“On the way out, I was preceding the casket, and I went over to Jacqueline and shook hands with her. I kissed little Caroline and shook hands with her. John John was getting a little restless, so he was down in the rear of the church. Outside at the end of Mass, John John saluted the flag, the most touching thing I ever saw.”
The responsibility for planning the funeral Mass had been given to Sargent Shriver, the husband of President’s Kennedy’s sister Eunice and founding director of the Peace Corps established by the president.
In his 2012 biography of his father, "A Good Man," Mark Shriver wrote that his father then took on the responsibility of organizing the funeral Mass and related arrangements with the same resoluteness, purpose and faith that marked his life of service to his country and his church.
Then-Auxiliary Bishop Philip Hannan of Washington, D.C., was a close friend and confidant of President John F. Kennedy, but he had kept that friendship secret. The chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese was called upon by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to deliver the eulogy at the funeral Mass for the country’s first Catholic president, who was killed by an assassin in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963.
“I was as numb and emotionally exhausted as every other American struggling to make sense of the stunningly brutal murder,” wrote then-retired New Orleans Archbishop Hannan, a paratrooper chaplain during World War II, in his 2010 memoir, “The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots.”
“My own grieving, however, would have to wait. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had asked that I deliver the eulogy for her husband—and my friend,” said the archbishop, now deceased.
Working late into the night before the Nov. 25 Funeral Mass, the churchman had decided that the eulogy should consist of key passages from the president’s inaugural address, to “let the president speak for himself in his own stirring words...On the day ending his presidency forever, I would cite passages from the day it had begun.”
The eulogy included favorite scriptural passages that President Kennedy liked to quote, which the family provided to Bishop Hannan.
As he walked up the steps to the cathedral’s pulpit to deliver the eulogy, Bishop Hannan looked out over the congregation that included the Kennedy family, President Lyndon Johnson, and former Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. World leaders in attendance included President Charles de Gaulle of France and Prince Philip of Great Britain.
When Bishop Hannan read part of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes: “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens, a time to be born, a time to die…,” he could hear people sobbing in the congregation.
He concluded the eulogy with Kennedy’s clarion call to serve others from his inaugural address: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”
—CNS
Zimmermann is editor of the Catholic Standard, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington.
