Dominique Bernard has been posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian decoration, by President Emmanuel Macron. A local resident lays a flower as she attends the funeral ceremony for French school teacher Dominique Bernard at the town hall in Arras on Thursday. A French teacher stabbed to death last week by a former pupil was to be laid to rest on Thursday, after a funeral in the northern city of Arras attended by President Emmanuel Macron.
The service in Arras cathedral for year-old Dominique Bernard was broadcast on a large screen in the city's Heroes' Square, where almost people watched in the rain. We loved one another. He didn't like crowds and honours, ceremonies, he detested them. Bernard had earlier been posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian decoration, by Macron, who spoke to the family before the ceremony.
Maxime, a former pupil, said Bernard was "kind" and "passionate" about his job as a French teacher. He always had little extra things to say about the authors he was presenting," he told AFP, waiting on the square for the funeral to start.
Well-wishers had laid bouquets on the cathedral steps, where around 30 teachers and staff from Bernard's school waited as the coffin arrived. Central Arras was shut down for the service, and classes were cancelled at the Gambetta-Carnot school where Bernard taught, allowing staff and pupils to go to the ceremony. He was killed almost three years to the day after teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school in a Paris suburb by a young man.
Institutions around France have been subject to bomb threats since Friday's killing, including a string of airports , the Louvre Museum and the historic Palace of Versailles outside Paris. Bernard's own school was targeted by a threat on Monday, when staff and pupils were set to hold a minute of silence in his memory. The school killing has stoked a fierce political debate in France around immigration and security.
