Watch AP video: Final farewell to Kennedy >>> | Saturday, August 29, 2009
GLOBE AND MAIL – Photo gallery: The Kennedy funeral; Mourners gather to say goodbye to Ted Kennedy >>>
REUTERS: BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidents, members of Congress and the public gathered on a rainy Saturday to say goodbye to Senator Edward Kennedy, a towering figure in American politics who contributed to major social changes in the United States over the last 50 years.
Senators and U.S. representatives of both political parties joined the large Irish-American Kennedy clan, the country's pre-eminent political dynasty, at a Roman Catholic basilica for a funeral where President Barack Obama was to deliver the eulogy.
Dozens of lawmakers from the last several decades -- many of whom had been Kennedy's fiercest foes on legislation -- attended the traditional Catholic funeral Mass in the stone, 130-year-old Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica.
Mourners -- from Hollywood star Jack Nicholson to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer -- packed the white and gold interior of the church beneath soaring arches and stained glass.
Obama and former presidents Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton sat at the front with their wives.
Since Kennedy's death on Tuesday of brain cancer at age 77, Americans have staged a series of memorials to the last of the Kennedy brothers, and his death has been treated like the passing of a president. >>> Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Scott Malone | Saturday, August 29, 2009
