By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
ROME, August 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Vatican's flagship newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has publicly taken note of Edward Kennedy's public misbehavior during the last 40 years of his life, in a brief obituary published on August 26.
Crediting Kennedy with being “constantly on the front line in battles over such matters as the protection of immigrants, arms control, the minimum wage,” it adds that “but he also unfortunately took positions favorable to abortion.”
The article does not mention that, in addition, the senator supported deadly embryonic stem cell research, “homosexual marriage,” and the the funding of contraceptive distribution programs, all positions anathema to the Catholic Church.
However, the obituary does note that Kennedy's long-planned presidential run in 1980 failed following the famous Chappaquiddick incident, in which he drove his car off a bridge and swam away, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown inside.
“Ted had long meditated and then tried only once to offer himself as a candidate for the presidency of the United States,” the newspaper states. “His struggle, in 1980, against then-president Jimmy Carter, for the nomination of the Democratic Party, was not successful, however. Weighing heavily at the time was the 1969 incident on Chappaquiddick Island, when his car fell off a bridge and ended up in the water. There was an assistant with the senator, Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned.”
“Kennedy, who only called the police a day after the incident, has always said that he tried to save the girl, but a court condemned him to two months in jail, with a suspended sentence, for failing to give aid.”
The article may serve to diminish the aura of glory created by the ostentatious funeral planned for the senator, at the end of which radically pro-abortion president Barack Obama will eulogize the senator.
Previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
The Kennedy Funeral – A Golden Opportunity or Capitulation for the Catholic Church