JFK GIVEN CATHOLIC MISSAL BY FATHER PEREIRA
Middleburg, Virginia (JFK+50) On Sunday, November 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy attended mass at St. Stephen the Martyr Church here in Middleburg. After the service, Father Albert Pereira gave the President a Catholic missal, a book of prayers and devotions.*
According to "The Catholic Commentator," the missal was "bound in calfskin, embossed with a crucifix and wrapped in cellophane."
Jump ahead to Dallas, Texas, Friday, November 22, 1963, President Kennedy has been declared dead from a gunshot wound in the brain. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson has been taken from Parkland Hospital to Air Force One waiting for Jacqueline Kennedy and JFK's body to arrive.
In the meantime, Texas Judge Sarah T. Hughes had been asked to come to Love Field to swear in the new president. It was expected she would bring a Bible with her. When she arrived, however, she had no Bible. This sent Kennedy aides searching for one. They found the Catholic missal and it was used in the swearing-in ceremony.
Afterwards, the missal mysteriously disappeared but somehow eventually turned up at the White House. Today it is on display at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.
*According to the LBJ Library, the missal's cover was designed & tooled by Bernard A. Cassidy of Medford, MA who "may have given" the book to JFK. Obviously, there is a conflict of information here from the two sources we have used for this post.
SOURCES
"Cover of the Missal used to swear in Lyndon B. Johnson," The Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, Texas
"Mystery of a famous missal," The Catholic Commentator, www.catholiccommentator.org/
