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French business tycoon Bernard Tapie was laid to rest in Marseille, “the city of his heart” on Friday, with supporters of OM football club joining family members and politicians in a typically maverick funeral ceremony mixing spirituality and applause.
A funeral mass was held on Wednesday in Paris, the city where Tapie was born and where he died last Sunday after losing a four-year battle with cancer.
But the final mass took place on Friday in the southern port city of Marseille, in accordance with Tapie’s wishes.
“We’re taking you home,” his son Stéphane Tapie confirmed on Instagram on Wednesday.
“The gladiator is finally resting,” said former minister and longtime friend Jean-Louis Borloo in a moving speech at the Cathedral of St. Mary Major.
Samia Ghali, deputy mayor of Marseille and former socialist senator, said: “He went to get us the star”, in reference to OM’s victory in the Champions League in 1993 during Tapie’s long tenure at the head. of the club, from 1986 to 1994..
You were “strong as a lion, as cunning as a fox, but human, resolutely human”, declared Renaud Muselier, head of the region.
“You seemed invincible.
Unusual applause
OM supporters who failed to access the cathedral listened to the tributes to the one they called “the boss” through loudspeakers in the square.
Thousands of people had marched behind the funeral procession earlier Friday from the Old Port to the cathedral, some holding smoke bombs.
Tapie was a maverick and his funeral reflected that. Fans cheered and cheered as porters carried the coffin down the aisle, as they did when Tapie’s grandson Rodolphe shared anecdotes of young family members cheering Manchester against Paris Saint Germain.
OM supporter Mireille Brechard, 72, told French media in front of the cathedral: “It’s very important for me to be here, to pay tribute to the one who made Marseille and OM this that they are today.
“Don’t tell me about VA-OM, it wasn’t her fault,” she said, referring to the 1993 match-fixing scandal which tainted her reputation and cost her 65 nights beyond bars.
“Not a saint”
Father Pascal, a Guadeloupe priest, spoke of Tapie’s deep Catholic faith and how he accompanied him during his last days.
Most of the speakers avoided mentioning the dark side of the tycoon and his convictions for fraud.
But the Archbishop of Marseille – who led the Mass – made the complexity of the man with multiple careers in business, politics and theater.
“Bernard Tapie was not a saint, far from it”, declared Mgr Jean-Marc Aveline, recalling that Tapie had “been as well in the heights as in the depths, in the corridors of power as in the dungeons”.
Yet “he loved this city because it resembled him: popular and free, proud and rebellious, tender and violent at the same time.”
Bernard Tapie will be buried in the Mazargues cemetery, near the OM Velodrome stadium.
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