2023-10-20 00:54:13
During the funeral of Dominique Bernard, Place des Héros, in Arras, October 19, 2023. SAMEER AL-DOUMY / AFP
First, the bikers and their blue flashing lights, silent. And then, the hearse. The vehicle emerges on rue Désiré-Delansorne, goes around the belfry to rue de la Braderie, before driving slowly past the town hall. On the Gothic facade, a giant portrait of Dominique Bernard, a French teacher murdered on Friday October 13 in Arras by a radicalized former student, he was 57 years old. In the photo, he poses in front of a Greek or Roman statue. He is wearing a t-shirt and a backpack, holding a travel guide in his hand. He smiles.
Read also: Photos of the tribute to Dominique Bernard in Arras, the day of his funeral
What remained of the blue sky was covered, and when the religious ceremony began, Thursday, October 19 at 10:30 a.m., it suddenly started to rain. The Arras cathedral district, where the teacher’s funeral is being held, is cordoned off and cordoned off. Closed businesses; police officers everywhere. A thousand people were able to enter: relatives of Dominique Bernard, students and teachers from the Gambetta school campus where he worked, a handful of officials, including the mayor of Arras, Frédéric Leturque, the president of the Hauts region -de-France, Xavier Bertrand, the Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, and Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, remained silent, at the request of the family.
Preceded by a Taizé cross, carried by students of the school, the coffin enters the nave, on the Sicilian de Bach. “We are here with the whole nation touched in the heart, says the Bishop of Arras, Mgr Olivier Leborgne. We are here, helpless but together. » In the front row, Dominique’s wife, Isabelle, also a teacher, his three daughters, his sister Emmanuelle, five years his junior, his nephews and nieces, and his mother, Marie-Louise Bernard, the former journalist’s sister of Monde, specialist in religions, Henri Tincq. The son liked to tease his mother, a practicing and committed Catholic: “It suits you well to believe that there is something after death…” He, who had lost his faith, affirmed that “religions only brought wars”. But he continued to read the Bible, of which he had two copies in his office.
“He didn’t like the sound and fury of the world”
“He loved Julien Gracq, Proust, Céline and Pierre Michon…, begins to read Isabelle Bernard, in a clear voice. He loved poetry, philosophy (…). Cinema, Truffaut, Kubrick. He loved the baroque (…). Italy, Tuscany, Caravaggio. He loved Matisse, Gauguin, Soulages. He loved Gothic (…). Provence, its colors, its scents. He loved ponds, rivers, forests. He loved the low evening light. » This solitary, sensitive and discreet man, elevated Thursday to the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honor by the Presidency of the Republic, “did not like social networks, crowds and honors, ceremonies, which he loathed”, continues his wife, who summarizes: “He didn’t like the sound and fury of the world. »
You have 66.32% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#elevated #rank #martyr #discreet #man