Funeral is held for Cardinal William O’Connell.

As part of his five-day requiem, O’Connell’s his body is viewed by 250,000 at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross at a time when it is estimated that that 80% of the population with a ten-mile radius of downtown Boston are Catholic. Twenty-five hundred people attend his funeral mass and 10,000 people line the streets outside. O’Connell is buried initially in a crypt in a chapel near the archbishop’s residence in Brighton, where he had previously announced that he would “repose until the Judgment Day.” But after the property is sold to Boston College in 2004, his remains are moved to a nearby tomb on the grounds of St. John’s Seminary on July 21, 2011.