Five American presidents are due to attend the funeral mass as Senator Edward Kennedy is laid to rest on Saturday.President Obama will read the eulogy, breaking off his holiday on Martha's Vineyard once more to pay his respects to his "dear friend", and former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. Bush and Jimmy Carter are expected to be among the mourners.The private Catholic mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Hope in Kennedy's home town of Boston will be the climax of three days of mourning for the head of the Kennedy clan and patriarch of the Democratic Party, who died of brain cancer on Tuesday night at the age of 77.The solemnities begin at noon today (1600 GMT), with a private Mass for family members at Kennedy's sprawling home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.An hour later a motorcade will leave the compound for a slow journey to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, where the Senator's body will lie in state until late Friday.On the journey the hearse will pass milestones in Kennedy's life — St Stephen's Church, where his mother Rose was baptised and buried; the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenaway Park in Boston, which Kennedy helped to create; and the site of Kennedy's office in his first job as an assistant district attorney for Massachusetts from 1960-62.As the motorcade drives past historic Faneuil Hall, the Mayor of Boston will ring a mourning bell — one of innumerable tributes to the departed politician.All government buildings across the country have lowered the Stars and Stripes to half mast, and last night the Lightship Nantucket, which has marked the dangerous shoals off the Massachusetts coast for 150 years, steamed in alongside Kennedy's house and illuminated his schooner.The Senator's body will lie in a closed casket at the library, while a military honour guard and members of his family, friends and staff stand vigil.Thousands of members of the public are expected to file through to pay their last respects, past enlarged photographs of Kennedy at different stages of his life.On Friday night, an invitation-only memorial service will be held at the library during which Joe Biden, the US Vice-President, and Senator John McCain, last year's defeated Republican presidential candidate, are both expected to speak.The family chose Our Lady of Perpetual Hope a cavernous 19th-century building that seats 1,300, for Saturday's funeral Mass because it was the church where Kennedy went every day to pray while his daughter, Kara, was being successfully treated for lung cancer in a nearby Boston hospital."Over time, the Basilica took on a special meaning for him as a place of hope and optimism," said a statement released by the Senator's office.
After the service Kennedy's body will be transported to Virginia, where at 5.30pm (2130 GMT) it will be laid to rest alongside the graves of his brothers, John and Robert at Arlington National Cemetery, on a hillside overlooking Washington.John F. Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and baby son Patrick, who died aged just two days, are also buried nearby.Kennedy is eligible to be buried at Arlington because of service in Congress and his two years in the Army from 1951-53, as a military policeman stationed in Paris.As the arrangements are made for Kennedy's obsequies, other moves are being made to adapt to the void he has left in American political life.Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, has thrown his support behind a proposal to change state law to allow the Governor to nominate an interim senator until a fresh election can be held.Kennedy himself made the request in a letter to Governor Patrick last week, writing that it was wrong for Massachusetts to go without a senator "at such a critical time" — a reference to the epic congressional battle over Mr Obama's healthcare reforms. Since his death, the state only has John Kerry in the Senate."I'd like the legislature to take up the Bill quickly and get it to my desk and I will sign it," said Governor Patrick.Meanwhile Democrats in Congress appear to be using the death of Kennedy, known as a liberal lion who championed social reform, as an extra weapon in their battle to get Mr Obama's legislation through.Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has argued that the healthcare reforms should be passed in Kennedy's name and spirit.Republican Rush Limbaugh has said that any such sentiments would make him "vomit".But the tactic has been used successfully before. Two years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson invoked the Kennedy name to pass the Civil Rights legislation, as well as the welfare state laws Medicare and Medicaid.
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