Marseille paid a last tribute to its former mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin | EUROtoday

Hundreds of Marseillais and personalities paid tribute to the previous mayor and determine of the French proper Jean-Claude Gaudin, throughout a funeral at La Major Cathedral on Thursday May 23.

The mass, within the church dealing with the ocean, introduced collectively 1,500 folks for greater than two hours, together with the spouse of the Head of State, Brigitte Macron, the previous President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy and Prince Albert II of Monaco. The authorities was represented by the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, and Marseillaise Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Secretary of State for the City.

During the ceremony, the audio system painted the portrait of a person of modest origins, a “formidable debater” who was one “the last great dinosaurs of political life”. “You were Marseille in all its complexity, in its flights (…) in his failings sometimes, his flashes always”described his successor and political opponent Benoît Payan (varied left).

Jean-Claude Gaudin, died Monday of a cardiac arrest on the age of 84, “had no other family than Marseille, and no life outside of politics”underlined Patrice Faure, chief of workers of the President of the Republic, on behalf of Emmanuel Macron.

Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, who presided over the ceremony, mentioned: “Like all of us, you were not a saint. » “Despite your faults and failings, you truly loved the people of our city” And “you wanted to serve them as best you could”he continued, praising this son of a mason and a employee who climbed the ranks “through his work, not his relationships”.

” Until the end “Jean-Claude Gaudin “had Marseille deep in my heart”assured Brigitte Macron on the finish of the mass, including that the president would have attended the funeral “if he hadn’t had to go to Nouméa”in New Caledonia, affected by violence for ten days.

“He will have marked our political family”, for Eric Ciotti

The procession left at first of the afternoon from Mr. Gaudin's native district, Mazargues, within the south of Marseille. The hearse, flanked by eight different vehicles, stopped for a number of moments in entrance of the Mazargues church sq. because the bells tolled the dying knell, earlier than leaving to applause.

He then made a short cease in entrance of the city corridor, the place Jean-Claude Gaudin reigned from 1995 to 2020. Then the procession reached the cathedral the place the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi (Horizons), the Ballon had been additionally current. d'or 1991, Jean-Pierre Papin, the president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, and even the president of Olympique de Marseille, Pablo Longoria.

Jean-Claude Gaudin “will have marked our political family”, defined to Agence France-Presse (AFP) Eric Ciotti, president of the Republicans, after the ceremony. In the church sq., there was no crowd, however 300 individuals who applauded timidly when the coffin was taken out, famous an AFP journalist.

Around 100 folks then gathered on the Mazargues cemetery for a sober ceremony, throughout which round thirty wreaths had been positioned on the grave, close to the identify of the previous mayor engraved, with out an epitaph, within the pink marble.

Born on October 8, 1939, Jean-Claude Gaudin turned a professor of historical past and geography in a non-public faculty, then was additionally a senator and minister, however above all mayor of Marseille. His opponents criticized him for having deserted the disadvantaged areas of the north of Marseille and letting a number of the colleges, which right this moment profit from a historic renovation plan, fall into disrepair.

His final mandate was marked by the tragedy on rue d'Aubagne, on November 5, 2018, when two unsanitary buildings in a working-class district of the middle – together with one owned by town – collapsed. Eight folks had been buried useless. The city corridor had been accused of getting ignored the alerts. The shock wave revealed the extent of substandard housing in a metropolis the place 40,000 folks dwell in slums.

Less than two years after the collapse of rue d'Aubagne, whereas its potential heirs on the fitting had been divided, some having joined Emmanuel Macron, a left-ecologists-civil society coalition gained the city corridor after municipal elections with twists and turns.