President Donald Trump on Jan. 23 signed an executive order directing the declassification of files on the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president, his brother Sen. Robert Kennedy, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the famed Civil Rights era leader.
Being Catholic and a major party’s nominee for President of the United States has always been controversial. It has only occurred four times — including this year — and the reason for controversy has changed.
No political theme song could have been more appropriate for John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign than Frank Sinatra’s classic cover of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen’s exuberant “High Hopes.”
Kennedy had been a member of the Knights’ Columbus Bunker Hill Council 62 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, joining on St. Patrick’s Day in 1946. He became a fourth-degree Knight in 1954.
