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McCaskill booked for another commencement speech

Sen. McCaskill (UPI photo/Bill Greenblatt)
Sen. McCaskill (UPI photo/Bill Greenblatt)

By AP/KWMU

St. Louis, MO – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill has scored a new gig as a commencement speaker after being uninvited to speak at her own daughter's graduation.

McCaskill will be in the southeastern Missouri town of Delta this weekend to give a commencement speech to Delta high's 19 graduates. She is also scheduled to be the graduation speaker at UM-Kansas City.

McCaskill was scheduled to be the speaker at her daughter's catholic high school graduation, but the St. Louis Archdiocese pushed the school - St. Joseph's Academy in Frontenac - to drop McCaskill because of her support of abortion rights and stem-cell research.

The president of St. Joseph's, Sister Michaela Zahner, said she reluctantly made the decision after receiving a call from the St. Louis Archdiocese.

The senator was told by the school that the decision came from Archbishop Raymond Burke, according to the senator's office.

"I'm disappointed that the archbishop has made this decision," McCaskill said in a statement. "It does not diminish my respect and admiration for St. Joseph's Academy, their faculty, and students."

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese, Anne Steffens, said the decision was not made by the archbishop. But Zahner said an archdiocese policy forbidding a public forum for speakers who diverge from church teaching clearly reflects Burke's position.

While St. Joseph's is a private, rather than an archdiocesan school, it receives its right to be identified as a Catholic institution through the archdiocese, Zahner said, adding that rescinding the invitation "was a very hard decision."

SLU GRADUATION

Meanwhile, Saint Louis University said this weekend that baseball great and St. Louis native Yogi Berra will be that school's commencement speaker on May 19th.

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