Funeral Mass held for Lindy Boggs

Photos by Frank J. Methe
Archbishop Gregory Aymond celebrated a Mass Aug. 1 at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans in tribute to former U.S. Congresswoman and ambassador to the Vatican Lindy Boggs who died July 27 in Chevy Chase. Md.  Photo above, Boggs' grandson Paul Eugene Sigmund IV places on her casket the Bible she used when she was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. (Below) After Mass, the Treme Brass Band led her hearse in front of the Cathedral down Chartres Street.

Boggs, who was 97, was a public servant for 60 years, serving nine terms as a representative for Louisiana, succeeding her husband, Congressman Hale Boggs, who was lost in a plane crash in Alaska in 1972. At the age of 81, President Bill Clinton appointed Boggs the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, beginning in 1997.  She was known as a gracious person whose strong Catholic faith steered her to be a stalwart supporter of civil rights and rights for women, children and the disadvantaged. She was buried in the tomb of her parents at St. Mary of False River Cemetery in her hometown of New Roads, La.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond delivered the homily at the Mass, calling Boggs a person in Congress who always was one of integrity, a women who lived her faith and always spoke lovingly and dedicatedly about her family, the city of New Orleans and her state. He recognized that she had lived dark moments in her life – the death of a son at birth, her husband's disappearance, the death of Barbara, her daughter – "but in those dark moments, as she herself said, when there had been heartache, she knew of God's love. She was always a champion for equality of all people, especially for women and children, and she was a big supporter of life issues."