CENTERVILLE, Mass. (AP) – Members of the Kennedy family gathered Monday for the funeral of Ethel Kennedy, wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Ethel Kennedy, who raised her 11 children after her husband’s assassination and continued to support social causes and the family’s legacy, died Thursday at age 96.

Monday’s funeral, which was not open to the public, was held at Our Lady of Victory in Centerville, Massachusetts, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Boston.

Mourners gathered at the church under a cool gray sky. Ethel Kennedy died as a result of a stroke she suffered earlier this month.

“In addition to her life’s work for social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren as well as numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom loved her very much,” the family statement announcing her death said.

President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, a symbol of resilience and service.”

The Kennedy matriarch, mother of Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy belonged. Her family said she had enjoyed seeing many of her relatives recently before she became ill.

Ethel Kennedy, the daughter of a millionaire who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, had, by the age of 40, as the whole world saw, suffered more deaths than most people would in a lifetime.

She was at Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, shortly after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California. Her brother-in-law had been murdered in Dallas less than five years earlier.

Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights shortly after her husband’s death and advocated for causes such as gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband’s murder.