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RFK Jr. rejects blame during eulogy at wife Mary Richardson Kennedy’s funeral

Robert Kennedy greets Joseph Kennedy II.

Robert Kennedy greets Joseph Kennedy II. (AP)

Caroline Kennedy

Caroline Kennedy (Douglas Healey)

Susan Sarandon.

Susan Sarandon. (Matthew McDermott)

GOODBYE, MOM: Robert Kennedy Jr. is joined yesterday by daughter Kyra (behind RFK) and and sons Aiden (back to camera) and Conor as they prepare to bury Mary Richardson Kennedy (left) at a cemetery in Centerville, Mass. (AP)

GOODBYE, MOM: Robert Kennedy Jr. is joined yesterday by daughter Kyra (behind RFK) and and sons Aiden (back to camera) and Conor as they prepare to bury Mary Richardson Kennedy (left) at a cemetery in Centerville, Mass. (AP)

Don’t blame Bobby.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shamelessly told a crowd of mourners at tragic wife Mary Richardson Kennedy’s funeral yesterday that her suicide was not his fault.

“I know I did everything I could to help her,” Kennedy said in his eulogy at St. Patrick Church in Bedford, where attendees included Chevy Chase, Larry David, Glenn Close and Susan Sarandon.

Kennedy, who was raspy and appeared tired, told the crowd that someone told him not to blame himself for Mary’s shocking suicide last week.

“The day before she died, she called me and said, ‘You know me better than anyone in the world,’ ” he said. “She said, ‘I was such a good girl.’ I said, ‘I know you are and you still are.’ She really fought so hard. She had these demons, and she didn’t deserve it.”

Mary, 52, hanged herself Wednesday in the barn of her Westchester mansion.

Kennedy spent most of his eulogy lavishing praise on his wife — although he noted that she harbored a grudge against him.

“She was a SoHo girl . . . She blamed me for taking her away from her profession [to raise a family],” he said, referring to her former career as an architectural designer in Manhattan.

The memorial came a day after a bitter family feud between RFK Jr. and his estranged wife’s family over who would claim her body.

Her six siblings didn’t attend the funeral.

Mourners also included Caroline Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Edward James Olmos, John McEnroe and Andre Balázs.

The church — where Mary’s four children, Conor, 18, Kyra, 17, Finn, 15, and Aiden, 11, had their first communions — was packed, with the crowd spilling into the lobby.

RFK Jr. remembered his wife as an adventurous woman with selfless spirit and dedication to her family.

“She was the most extraordinary woman I ever met,” he said. “I had feelings for her that I will never have for another human being.”

“Her greatest quality was her courage,” he added.

His eulogy followed a heartfelt speech by Larry David and longtime friend and sister-in-law Kerry Kennedy.

Kerry punctuated the somber funeral with laughter — recalling river rafting with Mary, when they were stranded on a sandbar in Colombia in 1977.

She said Mary put all her clothes in plastic bags to keep them dry but ended up giving them to pals while she wore soaking-wet clothes.

“She loved the sense of adventure,” Kerry said, adding, “She was beaming the day [her son Finn] got arrested for riding the conveyor belt on the baggage claim.”

She also recounted how Mary once convinced Andy Warhol to help raise funds for the campaign of her husband’s uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, by donating a painting

Westchester police escorted the hearse to the church a little after 10 a.m., and RFK Jr. and the couple’s children followed in a black Lincoln Town Car.

Family matriarch Ethel Kennedy, a veteran of such grim family gatherings, rode behind them inside a black SUV.

The wooden casket had no flowers on it and was carried by her children, one of her sisters and the gardener who discovered her body hanging inside the family’s barn.

RFK Jr. did not carry the coffin inside, where Mary’s body was rested between large vases of white roses and delphiniums.

Daughter Kyra read a psalm and son Aiden helped present gifts.

When the memorial ended at 12:45 p.m., Robert Kennedy Jr., his sons Conor and Aiden, Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy III served as pallbearers as they loaded the casket into a hearse for a four-hour drive to Mary’s final resting place, St. Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Mass. Sargent and Eunice Shriver — a Kennedy sister — are also buried there.

At the Massachusetts burial last night, 65 mourners dressed in black gathered around the grave. Mourners drove to the cemetery in their own cars, including Ted Kennedy Jr., who carried a bouquet of white flowers.

RFK Jr. stood by and watched as his children bowed their heads and bent over to touch the casket.

Before the funeral, Kerry choked back tears as she addressed a crowd of reporters.

“Mary suffered from depression, and it’s a disease that so many, many, many Americans suffer from,” she said.

“That’s what Mary did her whole life. She was battling those demons and keeping them out of the paradise that was Mary.”

On Friday, RFK Jr. bought eight plots at St. Francis Xavier Cemetery, including one for Mary, Maki Monument Co. told The Post.

Mary’s grave is positioned in a new row, a short distance from the Kennedy graves.

The Richardsons fought in court Friday to stop her from being buried in the heart of Kennedy country, but divorce lawyer Patricia Hennessey failed to convince a judge to let them take control of her body.

Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese and Marcia Scott Harrison