WOBURN — When the final prayers had been said and the body had been blessed, the man in the sequined red-tailed ringmaster's costume stepped up at the graveside and summoned the deep, baritone voice familiar to the circus audiences he entertained across the decades.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Children of all ages!” the old ringmaster, John Kennedy Kane of Buffalo, said in a booming announcement under a canopy of kelly-green springtime trees.

“In his final appearance! In the circus center ring! The fabulous. And wonderful. Father Jerry Hogan!”
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