Priest’s Diary on Jacqueline Kennedy Criticized

A priest’s diary of private conversations with Jacqueline Kennedy after her husband’s assassination should never again be seen in public, the head of Georgetown University’s Jesuit community said Monday.

The Rev. Brian McDermott said the papers, which detailed Kennedy’s anguish and thoughts of suicide, should have been destroyed long ago.

The decision to show them to reporters last month further eroded the public’s trust in priests, he said.

“The issue here is what should a priest put in writing and pass on to others,” McDermott said. “It’s not about academic freedom, it’s about another value -- the value of the relationship someone has with a priest.”

The typewritten diary was kept by the late Rev. Richard McSorley, a Georgetown University theologian who counseled the former first lady after President Kennedy was killed.

McDermott said Georgetown’s Jesuits are considering whether to make the documents available to the public through the university’s archives.

He said it would take an “incredibly overriding” argument to do that.

“We’re in a time when boundaries have been violated in so many terrible ways by priests -- this is another dimension,” said McDermott, who was McSorley’s supervisor. “It’s really hard for me to see who has a right to see these things.”

First made public in Thomas Maier’s book “The Kennedys -- America’s Emerald Kings,” McSorley’s papers paint a portrait of a grieving widow who talked about suicide and wondered whether her children would be better off being raised by her slain husband’s brother Robert and his wife.

Maier said the issue is about academic freedom, and said McSorley wanted the papers made public because they have historical value.