LONDON — Leaders across the world mourned Sen. Edward Kennedy on Wednesday, but perhaps nowhere was the praise more poignant than from Britain and Ireland, where the Massachusetts senator was a leading figure seeking to bring peace to their centuries of war in Northern Ireland.
“He lived to see two great chasms bridged, between Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland and between black and white in his own United States,” said former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of the Republic of Ireland.
Kennedy was strongly associated with the movement seeking an end to British occupation of Northern Ireland. He backed minority Catholics against Protestant loyalists and pushed Britain to negotiate with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which was denounced as a terrorist group by the British. Los Angeles Times
