a private funeral before a public tribute… What we know

The funeral of Jean-Marie Le Pen will take place this Saturday, January 11, 2025, five days after the death of the founder of the National Front, in La Trinité-sur-Mer. The ceremony will take place at 2:30 p.m. in the Saint-Joseph church and will be led by Father Dominique Le Quernec, rector of the parish of Carnac as Radio France learned from the presbytery. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s entourage will be held “in the strictest family privacy”, even the strong personalities of the party which became the National Rally and close to the founding family would not be present. Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan, vice-president of the party and former companion of Marine Le Pen himself will not be invited to the ceremony, he said on TF1.

Jean-Marie Le Pen will be buried in a very restricted committee and in the privacy of the town of La Trinité-sur-Mer, in Morbihan. The town of 2,000 inhabitants has always been important to the founder of the far-right party: it is there that he was born in 1928 and it is there that his parents rest in the family vault.

How Jean-Marie Le Pen approached his death

Died at 96, Jean-Marie Le Pen publicly spoke of his death on the eve of his 90th birthday in 2018. He had then already slipped into Figaro that he thought he would be buried in the commune of Morbihan: “I would probably be in the small cemetery of La Trinité-sur-Mer in my family vault”. He also considered the question of the epitaph he wanted to see in front of his final resting place. “I thought of a marble plaque marked Jean-Marie since I would be in the Le Pen tomb. There is no need to say my name, just my first name”; he confided. He added at the same time to the Parisian want to add “[sa] date of birth and date of [son] death”. “It’s perhaps a little daring”, he said in the face of your minimalist tone, but Jean-Marie Le Pen was used to “provocation” likes to remind the RN.

The location of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s funeral will be well respected. What about the epitaph? The niece of the founder of the French far-right party, Marion Maréchal, suggested a phrase to describe grandfather in her tribute to him on : “And since I must choose an epitaph for you, I take these few words from Saint Paul for you: ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.'”

Another ceremony open to the public

The funeral of Jean-Marie Le Pen will be held in small groups, even the number of guests has not been communicated. Marine Le Pen’s former communications advisor, Arnaud Stéphan, only clarified with BFMTV that in addition to the family of the founder of the National Front, certain residents of the town could also be invited. But another religious and tribute ceremony, open to the public, will take place a few days after the funeral: Thursday January 16 at 11 a.m. “in the Notre-Dame du Val-de-Grâce church” in Paris, it was announced. the family.

While several gatherings were organized on January 7, after the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen to “celebrate” the death, the question of the presence of anti-fascist demonstrators at the funeral or at the tribute ceremony arises. On this subject, Louis Aliot estimated on TF1 that the opponents of the founder of the FN, even the most virulent, “are not going to come and demonstrate at a funeral”. “And if they do, I suppose that the State will make sure to keep them away,” added the mayor of Perpignan, hoping that no demonstration could disrupt events.