Letters from Jackie Kennedy to Irish priest reveal secret heartbreak

She was beautiful, glamorous and adored by a nation – but that didn’t stop Jackie Kennedy despairing over her husband’s wandering eye.

In never-before-seen private letters from the First Lady to a Dublin-based priest, between 1950 and 1964, she compares President John F. Kennedy’s womanising ways to that of her own dad’s – who was also called John!

In one of her earlier letters to Fr Joseph Leonard, she says,  “He’s like my father in a way – loves the chase and is bored with the conquest – and once married needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy.”

The very charismatic JFK was rumoured to have had affair with blonde bombshell actress Marilyn Monroe while he was President.

In 1953, the year she married JFK, she wrote, “Maybe I’m just dazzled and picture myself in a glittering world of crowned heads and Men of Destiny – and not just a sad little housewife …”

However, letters following JFK’s tragic assassination in 1963 reveal the extent of her heartbreak.

“I think God must have taken Jack to show the world how lost we would be without him,” she wrote.

The 33 letters will be auctioned at Sheppard’s Irish Auction House in Durrow, Co Laois, on June 10th.

The collective archive is expected to fetch over €1 million.