The Original St Aidan’s Church

I have visited John F. Kennedy’s birthplace several times, so today, I decided to walk through the neighborhood to find St. Aidan’s Church, where he had been baptized. I knew it was only a few blocks away, so I expected it would be easy to find.  Instead, I found myself wandering the quiet streets of Brookline looking for a church that seemed to have disappeared. There was no obvious parish, no towering steeple drawing my attention, and no sign announcing St. Aidan’s. Then, almost by accident, I noticed a small bronze plaque set quietly into the grass.

The marker commemorates the dedication of St. Aidan’s Church in 1912 and recalls the parish’s long history. It also notes that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, born nearby on Beals Street in 1917, was baptized here and that several of his siblings also received the sacrament at St. Aidan’s. The plaque serves as a reminder of the close relationship between the Kennedy family and this Brookline parish.

Standing there, I found myself thinking less about the baptism itself and more about what this place represented.

The Catholic faith was central to the Kennedy family. Joseph and Rose Kennedy raised their children in the traditions of the Church, and that faith remained an important part of John Kennedy’s life. More than forty years after his baptism at St. Aidan’s religion became one of the defining issues of the 1960 presidential campaign. Kennedy addressed those concerns directly in his famous speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, affirming both his Catholic faith and his commitment to the separation of church and state. Later that year, he became the first Roman Catholic elected President of the United States.

I am glad I took the time to look for this landmark. Without the plaque, I would probably have walked right past it, never realizing its connection to one of Brookline’s most famous families. It is a simple marker, but it preserves the memory of a parish that played an important role in the early lives of the Kennedy children and reminds visitors that even the most familiar neighborhoods often hold stories waiting to be discovered.