In the majestic Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., during an Oct. 16 Celebration of Life for Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the singer Stevie Wonder honored his friend by first singing the Our Father accompanied by a harpist, and then leading the congregation in a rousing version of “Isn’t She Lovely.”
And during the nearly three-hour memorial service, the three U.S. presidents, her children and grandchildren, a former Speaker of the House, and the two farmworker leaders who spoke testified to that quality of Ethel Kennedy, who died on Oct. 10 at the age of 96. They remembered the widow of Robert F. Kennedy as the matriarch of her large family, as a national icon who took up the torch of her late husband’s work for human rights and social justice, and as a woman of faith and humor.
Welcoming the congregation of 1,ooo people filling the cathedral, Joseph Kennedy III, one of Ethel Kennedy’s grandchildren, said the gathering offered a time to celebrate “our beloved matriarch and without a doubt, the world’s greatest grandma.”
And he opened his remarks by addressing “Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President” – President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton who sat side-by-side in a front pew.
Moments earlier, Jesuit Father Don MacMillan, a family friend, had offered prayers before dozens of Ethel Kennedy’s family members accompanied her casket down the cathedral’s center aisle. The casket was placed in front of the sanctuary at the spot where the casket of her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, had been placed at his Requiem Mass on Nov. 25, 1963 after his assassination.
The service’s opening hymn, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee,” with music drawn from Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” reflected the mood that unfolded as the speakers and guest musicians honored Ethel Kennedy’s life and legacy.
A statement from her family six days earlier had announced her death from complications related to a stroke. The family’s statement noted that Ethel Kennedy “was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant” who was survived by nine children, 34 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews. Her funeral Mass was celebrated on Oct. 14 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, Massachusetts.
“My grandmother’s life was a life fully lived,” said Joseph Kennedy III in his opening remarks at the celebration of her life at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Kennedy – now a United States special envoy to Northern Ireland who formerly served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts – said Ethel Kennedy regarded every day as an opportunity to learn, to love and to battle for what is right.
He said his grandmother’s approach to welcoming crowds of varied guests to her family home for dinner – “whoever you were, there was always a seat for you” – also was shown in her respect and advocacy for those in need. “She used actions and words to make the world a better place,” Joseph Kennedy said.
In an opening prayer, Father MacMillan, a former campus minister at Boston College, noted that Ethel Kennedy was a woman of deep faith who put her hope and trust in God.
Then former President Obama in his remarks praised Ethel Kennedy as his “dear friend” and said she “alongside her husband Bobby helped tap the idealism of an entire generation.” After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Ethel Kennedy raised their 11 children, and Obama noted that as the family’s matriarch, she “instilled a commitment to justice in her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and helped raise a legion of change makers and public servants.”
Obama – who awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Ethel Kennedy in 2014 – pointed out that after her husband’s death, she did not withdraw from their shared work, and she founded the Robert F. Kennedy organization for human rights and was a passionate advocate for civil rights, juvenile justice, protecting the environment and many other causes.
Her example, he said, showed that “life goes on. No matter how deep the grief, there is joy and purpose to be found, no matter what hand we’ve been dealt with. Each of us has the power if we so choose to make the world a little better, and to make someone’s life a little better.”
Like other speakers, he noted her mischievous nature, like the time she pushed some of President Kennedy’s fully clothed cabinet secretaries into the pool. He also pointed out how their family had a menagerie of pets, including dogs, horses, cats, goats, chickens, turtles, an armadillo and even a seal.
In her remarks, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi – who served as the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007-11 and from 2019-23 and continues to represent California there – said Ethel Kennedy’s death marked a personal loss for her family and friends and a “profound loss for our country.”
“After the tragic loss of Bobby, Ethel moved forward with grace and dignity, and a profound dedication to carrying out their untiring commitment to expanding opportunity, to promoting civil rights and building a more peaceful world,” said Pelosi, who called her friend of more than six decades “a national treasure.”
Pelosi praised Ethel Kennedy’s “deep faith in God and in the goodness of others.” She added, “God truly blessed her family and America with her faithfulness… This was an extraordinarily special God-given person to us.”
Then Ethel Kennedy’s eldest child, her daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, spoke, telling how their mother brought her and two of her young brothers to Senate hearings to see their father investigate the mob. The children also visited him at work when he served as the U.S. attorney general. Their mother, she said, raised her children to play together in sports, to discuss current events, history and politics and to pray regularly. Summers at Hyannis Port in Cape Cod included morning Mass, and horseback riding, sailing, swimming and playing baseball or softball. “Our days ended with Bible readings and the rosary,” she said.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend – who formerly served as the lieutenant governor of Maryland – said their mother with her devotion to her faith could relate to the words of Mary in the Magnificat prayer: “The Almighty has done great things for me.”
“…Despite all the tragedies that darkened so many of her days, the Almighty had done great things for her,” said Kennedy Townsend, who said that explains why Ethel Kennedy often asked her family, “How lucky are we?”
Concluding her remarks, Kennedy Townsend said, “We have been lucky, Mommy, because we lived so long with you, who have been so in love all these years with Daddy.”
Then country singer Kenny Chesney, a family friend who said he “shared a soulful bond” with Ethel Kennedy from the moment he met her, sang an a cappella version of “You are My Sunshine.”
The next speaker, Martin Luther King III, praised Ethel Kennedy for living “a luminous life of faith, love and service.” He said she “answered the call and rose to the challenges of God’s plan for her life.”
King – who formerly served as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – noted that his family and the Kennedy family have had “a shared journey.”
“Fate and history knitted us together, and respect and love have kept us together,” he said.
He noted how he first met Ethel Kennedy when she and Robert Kennedy came to the Kings’ family home in April 1968 to offer their support after the assassination of his father, the civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“And just two months later, my mother (Coretta Scott King) went to the Kennedy home to express her condolences after the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy. Like millions of Americans, I was deeply moved and profoundly impressed by the remarkable courage and dignity that Mrs. Kennedy displayed in the difficult days after her beloved husband was assassinated,” Martin Luther King III said.
King said that after his mother and Ethel Kennedy lost their husbands to gun violence, the two women worked together as co-chairs on a national gun control education and advocacy campaign. “They felt they must lead a movement to help spare others the devastating loss of beloved family members to gun violence,” he said. “They didn’t just endorse this cause. They worked hard for it, and they showed up time and time again to lobby Congress to take action against gun violence and give people hope and inspiration to overcome tragedy.”
The next speaker, former President Bill Clinton, offered thanks to Ethel Kennedy “for the family you built, and the untold families you inspired.”
A lesson drawn from her life, he said, is that “the God she worshipped wanted all of us to be more other-directed, to think more how our works impacted other people… how our lives showed what we are for or against.”
Clinton said Ethel Kennedy was an embodiment “of the love St. Paul writes about in First Corinthians, not romantic love but agape love, love for your fellow human beings.”
He also highlighted her sense of humor, noting a valentine that she sent to him and other friends one year, that showed a picture of her surrounded by photos of all of her family members cut out into heart shapes, with the message, “Roses are red, violets are blue. I’m surrounded by love, but there’s still room for you.”
After Clinton was completing his term as president in 2000 and his wife Hillary had been elected as a new U.S. senator from New York, Ethel Kennedy sent him a note offering to give him advice on being a Senate spouse, free of charge.
The celebration of Ethel Kennedy’s life then continued with a surprise guest, Sting, who played the guitar and sang his song, “Fragile” that includes the lyrics, “…Nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could… On and on the rain will fall, like tears from a star, like tears from a star…”
The next speaker, Rory Kennedy, the youngest of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s 11 children, reflected on how she was born in December 1968, six months after her father’s death. “Mommy was all I ever had,” she said. “…It had become just us, all of us and Mommy. We were in it together.”
Rory Kennedy said her mother always believed in her and was her staunchest advocate, and told how when she was about 14 years old and was troubled after seeing television reports on apartheid in South Africa, she asked her mother if she and her brother Douglas could go and protest apartheid and get arrested at the South African Embassy. Ethel Kennedy said, “Great, I’ll drive!” Later, she said her mother looked on proudly as she was arrested for protesting there.
In 2012, Rory Kennedy directed, produced and narrated a documentary on her mother titled “Ethel” that is streaming on HBO Max. She said that in making that film, studying her mother’s life and in interviewing her mother and siblings, “I learned the central role mom played in all that my father accomplished and in all that he became… Her support and her love lifted him up.”
Over the years she also witnessed how her mother supported all her siblings, just as through her activism she supported the poor in the United States and human rights around the world. Ethel Kennedy, she said, lived “a life spent believing in others, supporting others and advocating for others. Hers has been such a beautiful and such an impactful life.”
Then singer Nova Tate accompanied by the choir from St. Martin of Tours Parish in Washington sang the song “The Blessing” and “Ave Maria.”
About two dozen of Ethel Kennedy’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren offered prayers and reflections to honor her, including Kat Kennedy Townsend, who prayed, “May we all work together as Grandma showed us toward a world of justice, forgiveness, peace and love.”
Bridget Kennedy Bailey prayed, “Let us pray for those who suffer injustice, and for those who have the courage to stand up against it.”
The grandchildren recited the first names of deceased family members and one noted, “We thank God for the light they all shined on us in their time on Earth.”
The Kennedy family announcement about Ethel Kennedy’s death noted that in addition to her husband, she was also predeceased by their children David and Michael; their daughter-in-law Mary; their grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse; and their great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.
Then stepping to the microphone, Lucas Benitez –who cofounded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers that defends the human rights of farmworkers – noted Ethel Kennedy’s support for their struggles and how she visited and marched with them, even joining them when she was older and needed a wheelchair. Benitez was joined by the group’s cofounder, Greg Asbed, who also spoke.
“Mrs. Kennedy together with her daughter Kerry stood with us from the very start,” said Benitez, whose remarks in Spanish were translated into English.
Benitez noted that he grew up in a one-room, dirt floor shack in Mexico before immigrating to the United States and working in tomato fields and citrus groves in Florida. His group, which exposed forced labor, sexual harassment and wage theft inflicted on farmworkers, was honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
“Mrs. Kennedy knew it takes all of us, from farmworkers to presidents, to defend the human rights that she held so dear,” Benitez said, adding that her name will live on “anywhere a farmworker harvests the food that feeds our nation.”
Kerry Kennedy, the seventh of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s children, serves as the president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization. She noted that she worked with her mother in that effort for the past 35 years. Ethel Kennedy founded the group in 1968 after her husband’s assassination.
“She wanted to create a dynamic organization… always grounded in his values and his vision of a just and peaceful world,” Kerry Kennedy said. She added, “Mom took up Daddy’s torch, but the fire she enkindled burned with her passion for justice, with her personal commitment to fairness, generosity, kindness, courage and love.”
Her mother’s work included helping restore clean water in Haiti to prevent children from dying of cholera there. Kerry Kennedy also described how her mother flew to Kenya to challenge an autocratic leader to release seven democracy activists who were imprisoned there, and six months later, they were freed.
“Now Mommy has passed, and we are left to advance and celebrate her legacy, as we celebrated our father’s… It is the legacy of a remarkable woman who in her decades-long work for justice helped to advance the cause of freedom and human rights across the globe,” Kerry Kennedy said.
After Stevie Wonder’s performance, President Biden stepped up to speak, and he joked that the long standing ovation he received was because he was the last speaker.
The president noted that in the Oval Office he placed sculpture busts of his two heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. He noted, “Ethel Kennedy is a hero in her own right.”
“We saw how she picked up Bobby’s cause and stamped her own mark on it,” he said.
President Biden noted how, “Ethel was always there for so many people. She played an essential role in my life, as well.”
Biden described how Ethel and Sen. Edward Kennedy supported him in 1972 after his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident while shopping for a Christmas tree, and his two young sons were seriously injured. He was a newly elected U.S. senator from Delaware then, and the Kennedys convinced him not to give up. Biden said when his son Beau died of cancer in 2015 after serving with the National Guard in Iraq, Ethel Kennedy again offered him support.
“Your mom was there then, too,” the president said, his voice breaking slightly. Addressing the Kennedy family after losing their matriarch, he said, “The Biden family is here for you, as you’ve always been (there) for us.”
The president added, “My message to all of us today, to the entire country, is to look to Ethel Kennedy’s faith.”
Reflecting on her life, President Biden said, “For over 50 years, with an iron will and moral courage, she gave everything she had. We’re a better nation, a better world, because of Ethel Kennedy.”
At the end of the service, Father MacMillan offered a closing prayer and presided at the commendation, as Thomas Stehle, the cathedral’s director of music ministries, sang the “Song of Farewell” that is typically sung at the end of Catholic funerals.
As the Kennedy family members escorted Ethel Kennedy’s casket down the cathedral’s center aisle and then carried it outside, the congregation sang “America the Beautiful” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Moments earlier, Father MacMillan prayed words that seemed to summarize Ethel Kennedy’s life: “Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord and one another.”
Link to livestream of A Celebration of Life for Ethel Skakel Kennedy:
