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President Barack Obama, three former presidents and the nation's elite gathered Saturday at a grand Catholic funeral for Edward Kennedy, America's legendary political patriarch.
Delivering the eulogy at Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Obama called Kennedy a "champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party, and the lion of the US Senate."
He said Kennedy -- whose elder brothers John F. Kennedy and Robert were assassinated in the 1960s -- had triumphed over "more pain and tragedy that most of us will ever know."
The eulogy was delivered before a who's who of the country's movers and shakers, including much of the US Congress, crammed into the pews of the historic Boston church.
Kennedy's coffin was then to be flown to Washington for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, alongside his slain brothers.
Kennedy's widow Vicki and three generations of the famed Irish-American clan, all dressed in black dresses or dark suits, fought tears as a priest told them that in Catholic faith "sadness is softened with hope."
But the tears flowed freely when Kennedy's son, Ted Kennedy Jr, gave a moving address about his father's tenderness to him during childhood when he had a leg amputated because of cancer.
"He taught us that even our most profound losses are survivable," Kennedy Jr said.
Recounting how his father helped him climb an icy hill with his new prosthetic leg, Kennedy Jr said: "He taught me that nothing is impossible."
"He was not perfect, far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs -- be they his own failings, or ours," Kennedy Jr said.
Edward Kennedy died Tuesday, aged 77, after suffering for more than a year from brain cancer.
Although many Americans disliked his leftist politics, the senator's passing was a national event, signaling the end of a half-century era in which his family was a highly influential force in the Democratic Party.
Tens of thousands of people queued to view his coffin on Thursday and Friday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, built on Boston's Atlantic shore.
Smaller crowds braved driving rain Saturday to line the route of the cortege carrying the flag-draped coffin from the library to the basilica.
However, heavy security prevented the public from getting closer to the church. Police shut down nearby streets and a no-fly zone was imposed over the city.
Guests included almost 50 senators and 100 members of Congress, as well as former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Also present was a range of celebrities including movie actor Jack Nicholson, and figures from the sporting and media worlds.
Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and opera great Placido Domingo provided music at the Mass, presided over by Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley.
The breadth of national respect for Kennedy was reflected the previous evening in the eclectic mix of guests at a pre-funeral wake held at the JFK library.
Speakers at the wake praised Kennedy as a patriot, legislator, and a man who knew huge privilege but also terrible tragedy.
"Some people born with a famous name live off it. Others enrich names. Teddy enriched his," Democratic Senator Chris Dodd said.
Several senior Republicans who had overcome ideological differences to form a bond with the Senate's leading liberal also attended.
Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator, spoke of his "love" for Kennedy, even if "there are few men with whom I've had less in common."
Once in Washington later Saturday, a cortege taking Kennedy's body to Arlington National Cemetery was to halt briefly near the Senate for a prayer.
Obama, who met briefly with Vicki Kennedy ahead of the funeral, was not planning to attend the burial itself.
The Kennedys' astonishing success in politics, media friendliness and frequent family tragedies, have led media at times to liken them to a US royal family.
Kennedy's support of Obama during the presidential election last year was also credited with giving the country's first African American president a significant boost in his meteoric rise to power.
