World leaders pay final respects to Jacques Chirac at Paris funeral as France mourns popular ex-president
Dozens of world leaders, including Vladimir Putin, have paid silent tribute to Jacques Chirac, the late French president, at a funeral service in Paris.
Flags flew at half-mast across the country on a national day of mourning.
Thousands of well-wishers had lined the streets of Paris to get a glimpse of the military motorcade carrying the casket.
To the strains of Fauré’s Requiem, Mr Chirac’s former bodyguards carried the coffin of the former Gaullist leader, draped in a French flag, up the steps of the Saint-Sulpice church.
Inside, Mr Putin - who heaped praise on Mr Chirac after his death aged 86 last week as a “wise" and “intelligent” leader - paid his respects alongside 80 other current and former heads of state and royals.
Among them was former US president Bill Clinton, who said: “I’ll miss Chirac, I’ll really miss him”.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri and Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani were also present.
Representing Britain was Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex.
President Emmanuel Macron of France was joined by three predecessors, including Mr Chirac’s erstwhile centre-Right rival Valérie Giscard d’Estaing, 93, his former protege Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande.
Conspicuously absent was far-Right leader Marine Le Pen whose former Front National party Mr Chirac saw as beyond the Republican pale and whose father he beat in a shock 2002 presidential run-off. The Chirac family had requested she stay away.
Mr Chirac, who served as president from 1995 to 2007, was feted by many French for opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a stance that put him at odds with Washington but burnished his Gaullist credentials.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo only sent belated condolences on Sunday, saying Chirac "worked tirelessly to uphold the values and ideals that we share with France”.
Inside Saint-Sulpice, President Macron at one point approached laid his hand briefly on the coffin before withdrawing.
During the service, Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris told the 2,000-strong throng gathered in the church: "Our former president, this warm man, had a true love for people, equally at home in the salons of the Elysee as the agricultural fair. Many who met him felt valued.”
The avuncular late leader embodied a love for his fellow man that is missing from today's society, said the Archbishop. "Goodbye, and thank you Monsieur Chirac.”
Argentinian pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim played Franz Schubert's Impromptu.
The funerals of the previous three French presidents were held in Notre-Dame, currently unusable after a devastating fire earlier this year. But to herald the national day of mourning, the cathedral’s bell was manually rung for the first time since the blaze
The service came a day after 7,000 people queued to view Mr Chirac's coffin at the Invalides monument in a public show of affection for the former president, whose popularity has soared since he left office in 2007 after 12 years in charge despite a 2011 corruption conviction. A poll out this weekend suggested he was the best-loved French leader since Charles de Gaulle.
"France is always paradoxical: it wants kings and then cuts off their head, it forces out the living and consecrates the dead," Mr Hollande told France Inter radio earlier.
"He was close to people. He loved people," said Florian, a well-wisher.
Mr Chirac’s widow, Bernadette, was not present due to ill health but she earlier attended a private family service at Saint-Louis des Invalides, along with their daughter, Claude, and 23-year-old grandson, Martin.
Afterwards, a sombre-looking President Macron presided over a military ceremony in the courtyard of Les Invalides, the site of Napoleon’s tomb.
Mr Chirac’s casket was laid on the cobblestones as the band played the Marseillaise.
Mr Chirac was later buried in a private ceremony the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, in a plot next to his daughter Laurence, who died in 2016 after a long struggle against anorexia.