Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died Tuesday at the age of 96, was buried Saturday afternoon in the cemetery of his hometown of Trinité-sur-Mer (Morbihan), following a mass celebrated in the strictest family privacy.
Around 200 people, including Marine Le Pen, her sister Marie-Caroline and the granddaughter of the deceased Marion Maréchal, attended the funeral tribute in the Saint-Joseph church. The president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella was also present but he remained far from the cameras, according to several sources.
At the end of a ceremony which lasted around two hours, a grieving Marine Le Pen, surrounded by members of her family and relatives of the former far-right leader, followed the hearse to the cemetery, distant a few hundred meters.
The cemetery, like the entire town center, had been placed under close surveillance by the police to avoid any excesses or demonstrations, but the day passed without the slightest incident.
-“Jean-Marie, we love you”-
Several hundred people took part in the procession which ended with applause upon arrival at the cemetery, according to AFP journalists on site.
“Jean-Marie, we love you!”, launched a sympathizer.
In accordance with his wish, the coffin of the man who liked to be called “the menhir” was then placed in the vault where his parents rest, not far from the Le Pen family home in the center of the village.
Marine Le Pen shook a few hands as she left, to the sound of binious and bagpipes from a traditional ensemble.
Among the guests was the former MP and former right-hand man of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Bruno Gollnisch.
“It is moving for me to pay a last tribute to him here and to pray for the salvation of his soul,” he told AFP.
“He is someone who has indisputably marked my existence,” he explains. “He was not at all consistent with the image that some want to give of him today based on two or three more or less unfortunate words, very far from being representative of all his work, his intelligence, his his culture, his warm temperament, imperious certainly, but warm. He was a happy comrade!”
“I came as a curious person, to pay tribute to a man who served France and who loved France,” explains Johann, 40, who lives not far away in Auray (Morbihan).
-Enhanced security-
Numerous police forces were deployed in the town of around 1,700 people and the port. Around a hundred of them, including a squadron of mobile gendarmes, were mobilized, according to a source close to the matter.
Several members of the National Rally security service, the DPS, were also present.
Tuesday evening, several hundred opponents gathered in certain cities in France, including Paris, Lyon and Rennes, to celebrate, with songs, smoke bombs and fireworks, the death of “JMLP”, which had justified the imposing police force on Saturday.
Another ceremony, “religious and of homage”, will take place on January 16 at 11:00 a.m. in the Notre-Dame-du Val-de-Grâce church in Paris, attached to the diocese of the French Armies. This mass, decided by Marine Le Pen and her sisters Marie-Caroline and Yann, will be open to the public.
A provocative tribune, obsessed with immigration and Jews, Jean-Marie Le Pen was condemned for several of his statements on the Second World War, and for homophobic insults.
Elected deputy in 1956 under the Fourth Republic, he brought the French far right out of its marginality during a political career which marked the Fifth Republic.
On April 21, 2002, he shocked the political class and a large part of French public opinion by reaching the second round of the presidential election behind the outgoing Jacques Chirac.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, after being married to Pierrette Lalanne, the mother of his daughters Marie-Caroline, Yann (herself mother of MEP Marion Maréchal) and Marine, married Jany Paschos for the second time.
In 2019, the Breton port and the Saint-Joseph church hosted the funeral of another celebrity from Trinité-sur-Mer, the singer Alain Barrière. The latter is buried in the cemetery which now hosts the remains of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
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