Word: mccarrick
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...what has been one of the most discussed gestures of a tightly choreographed day came at the Arlington National Cemetery evening burial service. Retired Washington Archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read excerpts from a private letter Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI - hand-delivered in July by President Obama - and portions of the Vatican response to Kennedy two weeks later. After making no public comment nor authorizing an official communique after Kennedy's death, was the Pope publicly reaching out to this controversial Catholic politician? According to both Vatican and U.S.-based Church officials, the answer...
...McCarrick himself noted at the brief final rite of committal and prayer that the reading was an idea he and Kennedy's widow Victoria had agreed to, apparently using a copy of Kennedy's letter that the senator had kept. The subsequent response from a papal aide offering Benedict's prayers for his health, according to a veteran ambassador to the Holy See, was likely of a pro forma nature. Such letters are typically handled either by the office of the sostituto, the No. 2 official in the Secretary of State's office or by the Pope's private secretary...
...this case, thanks to Victoria Kennedy and Cardinal McCarrick, millions of Americans heard directly from such a papal correspondence less than two months after the fact, providing a powerful close to the day of prayer and remembrance. Kennedy wrote to the Pope about his own failing health, as well as his legislative battles on behalf of the less fortunate. And though conceding that he was "imperfect," at least in the portion read aloud, there was no mention of the issues that divided him from Church teaching, like abortion. "I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness...
...Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, conducted the Rite of Committal and Prayer of Commendation, reading from a letter that Kennedy had asked President Barack Obama to hand deliver to the Pope earlier this summer. The Senator asked for the Pope's prayers because he knew his brain cancer had the upper hand. "I know that I have been an imperfect human being," Kennedy wrote, "but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path." The Vatican's letter in response, made public by the Cardinal for the first time, encouraged Kennedy to remember that...
...letter, most likely already resealed and tucked away in the Vatican archives, was probably just a dying Catholic's request for a papal blessing. (UPDATE: At Kennedy's burial at Arlington on Saturday, retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read excerpts from Kennedy's letter; he also provided portions of the Vatican's response to it.) In the eyes of the traditionalist wing of the Church, however, Kennedy should have been asking the Pope for forgiveness. The Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported Kennedy's death, praising his work on civil rights and fighting poverty, but noted that his record...