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Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger's grand nephew throws soil from the Holy Land on the cardinal's coffin during his Paris funeral Thursday. (AP)
Last update - 02:34 12/08/2007
Jews, Catholics bid farewell to Jewish-born French cardinal
By The Associated Press
Tags: Paris, Vatican, Sarkozy 

A sacred Jewish prayer read beneath the sculpted saints of Notre Dame Cathedral opened funeral proceedings Friday for Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, who was born Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism as a boy.

Lustiger, who lost his mother in the Holocaust and later devoted himself to healing the wounds between Catholics and Jews, had requested that his funeral include both faiths. He died Sunday at age 80 in a Paris hospice.

Hundreds of people, including prominent Jewish leaders of France, Holocaust survivors and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, gathered to see Lustiger's coffin carried through the crowd and placed on the stone square in front of the 12th century Notre Dame.
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Lustiger's grand-nephew read a psalm in Hebrew and French, and placed a bowl of earth gathered from meaningful Jewish and Christian sites in the Holy Land.

An 83-year-old Nazi death camp survivor and cousin of the cardinal, Arno Lustiger, then led the reading of the Mourner's Kaddish, among a series of prayers central to Jewish worship.

Lustiger's sucessor Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois said Lustiger wanted the members of his family, Jews and Christians, and his friends to say some traditional prayers for the dead.

The ceremony then moved inside the landmark cathedral, where Vingt-Trois led a funeral Mass.

Hundreds gathered outside despite the drizzly chill to watch the ceremony on huge screens.

One mourner carried a sign reading Sons and Daughters of the Deported Jews of France. Some 75,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and fewer than 3,000 survived.

Lustiger's faith remained complex throughout his life - he never rejected his Jewish identity, and the multifaith funeral appeared to be a symbol of that.

He always claimed he was still a Jew, which caused a certain amount of anxiety and concern within parts of the Jewish community, said Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, president of the International Council of Christians and Jews.

"It is highly unusual for the Mourner's Kaddish to be read among mourners for a convert from Judaism," said Rabbi Joel Roth, an expert on Jewish law at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York.

"It's important to emphasize that it's not possible to be both Jewish and Catholic," he said. "That is what this could suggest to some people."

Lustiger's coffin will be placed in Notre Dame's crypt.

Sarkozy, whose grandfather was Jewish but who was raised Catholic, interrupted his U.S. vacation to attend Lustiger's funeral, before jetting back to Maine for lunch the next day with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Aaron Lustiger was born in 1926 in Paris to Polish immigrant parents who ran a hosiery shop. As an adolescent, he was sent to the town of Orleans, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, to take refuge from the occupying Nazis. There, Lustiger, who was not a practicing Jew, converted to Catholicism at the age of 14, taking the name Jean-Marie.

He was ordained a priest in 1954, and served as chaplain to students at the Sorbonne University. Lustiger climbed up the church hierarchy before becoming archbishop of Paris, a post he held for 24 years before stepping down in 2005.

Lustiger remained a grassroots figure, creating a Christian radio station, Radio Notre Dame, in 1981 and expounding on issues from the August 2003 heat wave that killed thousands of people in France to the building of a united Europe.

He also respected his Jewish heritage.

"For me, it was never for an instant a question of denying my Jewish identity. On the contrary," he said in Le Choix de Dieu (The Choice of God), conversations published in 1987.
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  1.   Think 04:04  |  Ron 10/08/07
  2.   dov koret 2 05:00  |  realism 10/08/07
  3.   If... 05:21  |  Yosemite 10/08/07
  4.   This is a great story - for all the bigots 05:30  |  Sensible 10/08/07
  5.   Lustiger 05:32  |  Yaacov 10/08/07
  6.   Cardinal Lustiger 06:45  |  Connie 10/08/07
  7.   A True Christian... 06:51  |  Blogowitz 10/08/07
  8.   Jewish Joke 06:55  |  Hanoi 10/08/07
  9.   Connie 07:04  |  Gina 10/08/07
  10.   Lustiger 07:06  |  Aidel 10/08/07
  11.   once a jew always a jew 07:31  |  Nadia 10/08/07
  12.   #5 07:47  |  David 10/08/07
  13.   Cardinal Father Lustiger and Our Father 07:48  |  Rev. Gretchen 10/08/07
  14.   A Kiddush Hashem B`rabim 07:49  |  Scott Israel 10/08/07
  15.   Connie 07:53  |  David 10/08/07
  16.   Why Do We Really Care? Its His Death Wish. 07:53  |  Brad 10/08/07
  17.   Excellent! Our man behind enemy lines! 08:04  |  jeremija k 10/08/07
  18.   #6 Sensible, NOMEN OMEN 08:07  |  hala 10/08/07
  19.   Saul you need to believe also 08:38  |  Antony 10/08/07
  20.   Roots - and growth 08:47  |  English Resident 10/08/07
  21.   Mao 08:49  |  Margie in Tel Aviv 10/08/07
  22.   Kaddish & Psalms 08:54  |  JW 10/08/07
  23.   Realism # 2 09:12  |  Philippe 10/08/07
  24.   Everyone loves a Jew that converts. 09:26  |  Jew 10/08/07
  25.   Judaism and the magic of the church 09:34  |  maurice 10/08/07
  26.   What a unsavory show,why not Imam and Lama too ? 10:11  |  Absolute Sweden 10/08/07
  27.   cardinal lustiger 10:21  |  elliot 10/08/07
  28.   A JEW IS S JEW IS A JEW.HIS CONSCIENCE DID NOT REST&WILL NOT EVER 10:58  |  VOICE of MOSHIACH))) 10/08/07
  29.   With the best of intentions... 11:07  |  Joseph 10/08/07
  30.   #14 kiddush Hashem berabbim 11:11  |  Joe 10/08/07
  31.   So where are the attacks everyone here disagrees with? 11:11  |  martyrmaker 10/08/07
  32.   Does it really matter if he were a Jew or a Christian? 12:05  |  Darin 10/08/07
  33.   Lustiger 12:19  |  Naim S. Mahlab 10/08/07
  34.   Why not? 12:40  |  christoph 10/08/07
  35.   May Jean-Marie Lustiger rest in peace 12:53  |  KUTW 10/08/07
  36.   VOICE of MOSHIACH))) 12:55  |  KUTW 10/08/07
  37.   30. Joe 13:01  |  KUTW 10/08/07
  38.   phillippe 23 13:02  |  realism 10/08/07
  39.   Not Possible to be Both??????? 13:26  |  Ronnie Wolman 10/08/07
  40.   children of God-reply to post 13 13:26  |  Jamal 10/08/07
  41.   TO POST #13 13:53  |  DAVE 10/08/07
  42.   Cardinal Lustiger`s jewishness 13:58  |  Michel 10/08/07
  43.   Jamal . "not all are children of God"? 14:13  |  Akiva Patysh 10/08/07
  44.   With one tuches. . . 14:14  |  Lisa 10/08/07
  45.   Bless you, Jamal! 14:15  |  Davids 10/08/07
  46.   God bless him 14:16  |  Frederique 10/08/07
  47.   Akiva that`s a basic contradiction of Christianity 14:24  |  non-christian 10/08/07
  48.   Good morning, Mr. Wolman. 14:34  |  Akiva Patysh 10/08/07
  49.   the strange Jewish faith! 14:39  |  perplexed 10/08/07
  50.   They have Notre Dame Cathedral for national services 14:42  |  Joseph E . 10/08/07
  51.   Michel of Doha. Qatar 14:44  |  Akiva Patysh 10/08/07
  52.   to non-Christian 14:56  |  Indonesian 10/08/07
  53.   to Antony (the Jew???) 15:14  |  Goldenberg 10/08/07
  54.   You let me perplexed! 15:35  |  Goldenberg 10/08/07
  55.   Akiva: Race,Religion and Perspective 15:41  |  Ronnie Wolman 10/08/07
  56.   hey Rev. Gretchen 15:41  |  Goldenberg 10/08/07
  57.   The Cardinal sounded like a great man 15:53  |  The Equalizer 10/08/07
  58.   Lustiger was faithful for the faith he elected to follow 16:02  |  * BEN JABO 10/08/07
  59.   Akiva Patysh - circumcision 16:08  |  Davids 10/08/07
  60.   Reply to Joseph E. in Givatayim 16:14  |  Johnny Weintraub 10/08/07
  61.   Very Interesting 16:16  |  David 10/08/07
  62.   guide to perplexed... 16:17  |  Akiva Patysh 10/08/07
  63.   Akiva Patysh on charity 16:20  |  christoph 10/08/07
  64.   Lustiger rejected Judaism, period. 16:21  |  Moise 10/08/07
  65.   pals of israelite origin ,for#49 16:23  |  scanadu 10/08/07
  66.   born jew, left this world as a jew 16:25  |  baba lalou 10/08/07
  67.   Frederique (Post No. 46) 16:25  |  Johnny Weintraub 10/08/07
  68.   #13 Rev Gretchen 16:32  |  Dani 10/08/07
  69.   Quite an Image Before the Cathedral 16:46  |  Yaakov Sullivan 10/08/07
  70.   Like it or lump it 17:07  |  sh 10/08/07
  71.   "requested that his funeral include both faiths" 17:12  |  Jake