Thousands Attend Funeral for Late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Scalia, who had been the longest serving justice on the current Supreme Court, died last week on a Ranch in Texas.

The Rev. Paul Scalia, the justice’s son and a Catholic priest, presided over a traditional service that lasted more than 1 1/2 hours and dispensed with eulogies that Scalia himself had said he did not like.

Mixing humor into the homily, the younger Scalia has said his father sometimes forgot their names or mixed them up but he excused him because there were nine of them.

Rev. Scalia then spoke about his father’s family-centered life and his deep well of faith: “We give thanks that Jesus bestowed upon him 55 years of marriage to the woman he loved, a woman who could match him at every step and even hold him accountable”, said Scalia.

Attendees included Vice President Joe Biden, former Vice President Dick Cheney, members of Congress and all eight sitting justices sat in attendance. Scalia lay in repose at the Supreme Court on Friday, where thousands of visitors came to honour one of the countrys most influential conservative voices. President Obama has already handed down mountains of restrictions on free enterprise, and one could expect much more from a left leaning court. Like other Republicans, he has said that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, should not choose Scalia’s replacement.

The Rev. Paul Scalia is set to lead the funeral Mass and deliver the homily. The extended Scalia family gathered around the widow inside the court.

One of the most prominent attendees was Paul Clement, a former clerk who served as solicitor general during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“We can not depart here unchanged”, Paul Scalia said, and no one did.

Justice Scalia’s casket, draped in the U.S. flag, received a final blessing before being led out by pallbearers for a private burial.

For Scalia’s extended family and followers, however, Saturday loomed as a day to say goodbye to the man who was for many the leader among conservative legal scholars.

Mr Obama, who has the authority to nominate Supreme Court justices, has said he will announce his nominee “in due time”.

Texas senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz – who served as a clerk to former Chief Justice William Rehnquist – took a break from the campaign trail to mourn.

The melding of hubris and humility amid several thousand mourners symbolized Scalia’s 30-year Supreme Court career, which began when President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill would broker deals over drinks and ended amid wild conspiracy theories about who might have wanted Scalia dead. It is, first and foremost, a Mass, in which there are Scripture readings, psalms, hymns and the Consecration of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

He questioned whether the president would have been at the funeral Mass “if it were held in a mosque”.

The fact that a Catholic of Scalia’s stature did not have his funeral Mass celebrated by a high-ranking cardinal or bishop but by his son was seen as important and sentimental. Scalia’s casket was placed upon the same catafalque used for President Abraham Lincoln.