Funeral For Saoirse Kennedy Hill Held On Cape Cod

CENTERVILLE, MA — Mourners filled a Cape Cod church Monday to say goodbye to Saiorse Kennedy Hill, the granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy. Hill, a 22-year-old Boston College student, died at the family's Hyannis Port compound Thursday. She was the daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill, one of RFK's four daughters.

A funeral Mass was held at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, followed by a private burial service. Among the pallbearers were Kennedy Hill's cousin, Congressman Joseph Kennedy III, and her uncle, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy II.

Toxicology tests are still pending, according to The Associated Press, which said it obtained audio of a Barnstable police dispatch call that indicted officers responded to a report of a drug overdose at the Kennedy compound. Hill was taken to Cape Cod Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Hill was a communications major at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College. She was set to graduate next year. Vice President for Student Affairs Joy Moore said Hill had many friends and was active with the College Democrats.

"Saoirse was a gifted student who aspired to work in the communications field and contribute to the national dialogue through TV, radio, music, and film," Moore said in a statement last week.

Hill wrote about her struggles with depression while a student at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts.

In a column for the student newspaper, she wrote, "My depression took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life. Although I was mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest. These bouts would come and go, but they did not outwardly affect me until I was a new sophomore at Deerfield."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kennedy Hill's uncle, remembered her as "fierce, both in her love for her family and yearning for justice."

"A fearless adventurer, she inspired curiosity and daring in her friends," Kennedy wrote on Instagram. "But her greatest gift was to find humor in everything and to give us all the gift of her laughter — and our own. The gaping hole that she leaves in our family is a wound too large to ever heal."

• Previous: Kennedy Granddaughter Dies: 'Our Hearts Are Shattered'