FUNERAL OF ABBÉ° PIERRE, FAREWELL OF CARDINAL BARBARIN TO “INSURGENT OF GOD”

FRANCE: ON LADYSILVIA: Braving the cold and bad weather an immense crowd of common people and high-profile figures of the political and cultural scene, bade final farewell to Abbè Pierre, who died on Monday at the age of 94 from a lung infection. “Thank you Lord for having given us such a brother.

Thank you Abbè Pierre for having given us such an example. You leave us and we, as our companions of Emmaus, take off again at a steady pace, today, to testify this love and serve others, until our last breath”, said in his homily Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who presided the funeral ceremony at the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris, remembering “the insurgent of God who entirely dedicated his life to the poor” and underlining “the intrepid work of a champion of charity”.

Lying on the Abbè’s coffin were his legendary cloak, beret, the stole and robe of the Capuchins, the Order he entered in 1931. During the ceremony, broadcasted live by the main national TV channels and radios, Monsignor Andrè Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, bade farewell to the “moral authority” incarnated by the priest, whose death “arose profound commotion throughout the nation”.

Also Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, remembered Abbè Pierre as “a friend of humanity and all religions”. The ’little priest of the poor’ will be buried this afternoon in a modest cemetery in the village of Esteville (Seine-Maritime, Normandy), alongside those who worked with him from the start, Georges Legay and Lucie Coutaz, his secretary for 40 years. By his express will, there will be no headstone on his grave. In recent years he loved to say: “Death? I welcome it. Dying is like coming out of the shade into the light”. [BO]

FONTE: MISNA