Kennedy had strong links to Mass. funeral church

The spires of The Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help tower above Mission Hill, one of Boston's most culturally diverse neighborhoods, an area filled with the very kinds of people whose causes Sen. Edward Kennedy championed for nearly half a century in the Senate.

It's home to large African-American and Hispanic populations, a place where Colonial and Victorian homes that once belonged to some of the city's wealthiest residents now share space with triple-deckers and brick row houses.

It's a place where lifelong residents mix with students from nearby Northeastern University and other colleges, and with workers from the Longwood Medical Area, home to more than 20 medical facilities including the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

It is a place where Kennedy felt comfortable to pray when his daughter, Kara, was undergoing treatment for lung cancer at Dana-Farber.

"One day I came here and I see a fellow and I said, 'Gee, that looks like Sen. Kennedy,'" recalled John Clifford, 83, who has spent nearly all his life in the parish - better known as Mission Church.

"I saw him go down to the side aisle and stop and pray at the shrine," Clifford continued. "Then I read a couple of days later that his daughter Kara was at the Dana Farber."

The shrine in the corner of the spacious church is where countless visitors have come to pray through the years, drawn by its more than century-old reputation for spiritual healing.

On either side of the shrine where Kennedy once prayed, below the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, sit large vases overflowing with symbolically discarded crutches and canes.

"There have been cures, miracles that have happened," said the Rev. Philip Dabney, associate pastor of the church.

The Mission Church was constructed from 1876 to 1878 in the Romanesque Revival style. With a seating capacity of 1,250, it's one of the largest churches in the Boston Archdiocese - and is expected to be filled Saturday with dignitaries, politicians and invited guests. President Barack Obama is to offer the eulogy, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma and tenor Placido Domingo are to perform.

Pope Pius XII gave the church basilica status in the 1950s. To merit the title, a church must have imposing architecture, a substantial number of visitors, and play an important role in spiritual healing, consolation or prayer.

Dabney said being chosen for Kennedy's funeral was a "wonderful blessing" and completely unexpected, as were the senator's earlier visits, which came unannounced and with little fanfare. And he believes the diversity of the neighborhood helped make the church a fitting place for a final celebration of Kennedy's life.

"His Mass of Resurrection is being celebrated in a neighborhood of tremendous cultural ethnicity that represents everybody that he spent his life working for," Dabney said.

"He lived for these people, and at his death he's leaving from where he started."