France pays respects to teacher killed in attack

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 57-year-old Dominique Bernard was broadcast on a large screen in the city's Heroes' Square, where almost 600 people watched in the rain.

"Sensitive and discreet, (Bernard) didn't like the sound and fury of the world," his wife Isabelle, also a teacher, told the roughly 1,000 people in the church.

"He deeply loved his daughters, his mother and his sister. 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.

But the attention on Thursday was on the words of people who knew Bernard.

"I see your silhouette in the staff room, I see the shirt you always wear, the cup you hold, your mischievous smile because you have something funny to say," a colleague, Aurelie, told the service.

"You were there for (the pupils) and they knew it."

Maxime, a former pupil, said Bernard was "kind" and "passionate" about his job as a French teacher.

"He loved to help us discover literature. 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.

Classes cancelled

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.