Private letters of JFK's widow Jackie Kennedy to Irish priest revealed

Jackie’s confessional letters to Fr Joseph Leonard give intimate insight into her marriage.

14:52 14 May 2014

Jackie Kennedy’s 14-year correspondence with Father Joseph Leonard, which chronicle ladies’ man JFK’s wandering eye, his ruthless political ambition and his assassination, has been revealed and will be put up for auction. 

 

Jackie, who led a fiercely guarded private life particularly in the wake of her husband's shooting, shared her deepest thoughts and emotions to an Irish Priest she met in 1950 when she was touring Europe. The Dublin priest was 52 years old when their correspondence began and became a source of great comfort for the young political wife. 

 

In one of Jackie’s letter to the priest that was sent in 1952, she said: “He hurt me terribly when he was campaigning and never called up for weeks.

 

“I think he was as much in love with me as he could be with anyone and now maybe he will want to get married because a senator needs a wife, but if he ever does ask me to marry him it will be for rather practical reasons – because his career is this driving thing with him.”

 

After her husband was assassinated, she revealed that she had troubled making peace with God. She wrote: “I am so bitter against God.”

 

“I feel more cruelly every day what I have lost – I always would have rather lost my life than lost Jack.”