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http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=5143320&siteId=106

Lawmakers bid Drinan goodbye
By Evan Lehmann Sentinel & Enterprise Washington Bureau
Sentinel & Enterprise
Article Launched:02/02/2007 10:54:33 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- Free after eight years in a Soviet gulag, dissident Natan Sharansky scanned the crowd of supporters at a Capitol reception in the mid-1980s, settling on Father Robert Drinan near the back of the pack, one of his most tenacious champions.

"That was Father Drinan -- eager to help all in need, slow to accept credit," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recalled in a eulogy at Drinan's funeral in Washington Thursday.

No longer sheltered in the shadows, the Massachusetts priest and congressman was honored in a high profile Catholic ceremony strewn with lawmakers, scores of priests and hundreds of mourners at the massive Church of St. Aloysius on Capitol Hill.

Reflecting his characteristic modesty, the Jesuit priest's coffin was covered with an unadorned beige fabric as it was rolled down the center aisle of the towering church behind a procession of perhaps 30 priests.

Following Drinan, who died Sunday, was a two-by-two line of lawmakers, including much of the Massachusetts delegation. Reps. Edward Markey, James McGovern, Stephen Lynch and Sen. Edward Kennedy, all Democrats like Drinan, filed through.

Rep. Barney Frank, who succeeded the pro-choice priest when the Vatican barred Drinan and other clergy from politics in 1980, idled in a rear pew.

Frank, who represented Fitchburg until the district was redrawn in 1982, gripped both arms of a priest in a friendly gesture as he left the building.

After communion moments earlier, Kennedy expressed sadness at the absence of Drinan's wit, legal intellect and commitment to humanitarian causes. Kennedy, the only member of the delegation to have preceded Drinan in Congress, said the priest's presence was like a streaking "meteor."

"His election to Congress was a dramatic turning point in the effort to end the tragic, misguided, and wasteful war in Vietnam," Kennedy said from the lectern. "We miss him more than ever in the halls of Congress today, when that cruel history is repeating itself."

The 90-minute ceremony was punctuated by tears, laughs and memories.

Max Kampelman, a longtime friend of Drinan and a former U.S. ambassador that worked on nuclear weapons issues with the Soviet Union, recalled a recent lunch with the 86-year-old priest. Kampelman said Drinan expressed interest in the ambassador's ideas surrounding a global commitment to reducing weapons of mass destruction.

"I promised to keep him informed," Kampelman said. "I will. Death, after all, is only a horizon. And the horizon only reflects the limit of our sight."

In a lighter moment, Pelosi played off another speaker's joke that Drinan's forced departure from politics was eased by the fact that the Massachusetts delegation would be left in the care of a liberal senator, Kennedy -- an ironic offset of the Vatican's conservative edict.

"And I know (Drinan) was happy to hear that the district would be in the good hands of Barney Frank," Pelosi said, referencing the gay, pro-choice, Jewish liberal. The crowd hesitated, then laughed and erupted in a delayed applause.