January 11, 1996
Web posted at: 9:54 a.m. EST (1454 GMT)
JARNAC, France (CNN) -- In ceremonies befitting both his position of power and his humble roots, former French President Francois Mitterrand was honored Thursday by world leaders in Paris and by his birthplace of Jarnac. Mitterrand, who was 79, fell victim Monday to long-standing prostate cancer. He had preferred an intimate burial at the small brandy-making town to a state funeral in Paris.
Mitterrand, the longest-serving leader of the Fifth Republic, was buried in the family tomb at Jarnac in southwestern France after a private mass. Some 20,000 people converged on the town of 2,000 to honor him. The funeral procession of family and friends paused in a light drizzle outside the weathered stone house where he was born on October 26, 1916. They then followed his oak coffin, which was marked with a cross and draped with a flag, through narrow streets to the cemetery.
Widow Danielle Mitterrand, her black overcoat and white scarf blowing in the wind, looked on stoically and was joined by her sons, Gilbert and Jean-Christophe, and her grandchildren. Mitterrand's long-time mistress, Anne Pingeot, and their 21-year-old daughter, Mazarine, stood next to them.
Actor Gerard Depardieu and writer Francoise Sagan also were among the 200 attending the service, which was off-limits to the media.
Eight military pallbearers carried the coffin. A military band played the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. That is the anthem of the European Union that Mitterrand worked so hard to build during his 14 years in office.
In the capital 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, kings, princes and presidents bid a sorrowful farewell to Mitterrand at a requiem Mass in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The 1,300 dignitaries prayed and mourned the late Socialist leader at the Mass celebrated by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. However, although Mitterrand was raised a Roman Catholic, he died an agnostic.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Mitterrand's partner in more than a decade of robust European interaction, shed tears, as did as Cuban President Fidel Castro, one of 65 heads of state and government on hand.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin made his first trip abroad since heart trouble in October. U.S. Vice President Al Gore, British Prime Minister John Major, and U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali were among the other foreign leaders who joined current French President Jacques Chirac for the memorial.
From the Middle East, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sat near each other in the cathedral.
Mitterrand was catapulted to power in 1981 by a leftist coalition that later broke up over the president's shift to more conservative policies two years later. That was when a flight of capital forced him to abandon a campaign of nationalization and other leftist reforms.
Mitterrand also pursued hard money policies and deregulation that modernized France, the world's fourth-largest exporter. He joined with Kohl in trying to turn the 15-nation European Union into an economic, and perhaps political and military, superpower.
Although he was an eloquent advocate of human rights and a veteran of the French resistance, Mitterrand was criticized for working with pro-Nazi collaborators during World War II. His government in later years, during his second seven-year term, was also plagued by scandals.
Yet, when news came of Mitterrand's passing, thousands of people braved the rain this week to deposit red roses, a socialist symbol, outside his office.
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