The following is the text of a telegram wired form Rome by Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan following the death of President Kennedy:

“John F. Kennedy was a man, a husband, a father, a son, a brother. The entire human family mourns his death. We are somehow all diminished when a man of his vision, principle and courage is cut down in his prime. But in Christian confidence we ask God to received him now and grant him eternal light and peace.

“In each of John Kennedy’s family relationships we recognize our own personal bonds with our own. For Mrs. Kennedy and their children, for all the Kennedy family, we offer our prayers asking God to help them in their loss.

“But John F. Kennedy was also president of the United States and his assassination for whatever cause is an action that strikes at society itself and at every civilized human being. The whole nation—and indeed the whole world—shares some responsibility for this crime.

“We have grown tolerant of hatred. We have flaunted law. (We have wished for peace without working for justice.) But when law is scorned anywhere life becomes cheap everywhere.

“The president stood for law and justice, order and peace. His brutal death was the final sacrifice he made for them. This is not time for wild and angry accusations, nor for political charges. Perhaps, by the grisly reminder of an assassin’s bullet, we are being sobered by moral reality. We cannot have selective lawlessness.

“May God help the United States to build her place among the nations, not in terms of wealth and power, but as a democracy able to examine its conscience and amend the crime that has shocked humanity.”