A national tribute to General Jean-Louis Georgelin is paid on Friday August 25 at the Invalides. The former army chief of staff died last week at the age of 74 while hiking in the Pyrenees. This ceremony, in the presence of President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, will take place at 11 a.m. Follow the ceremony live.
A fall during a hike. Chosen by Emmanuel Macron to oversee the reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris, General Georgelin died Friday evening in a fall during a hike he was doing alone on the slopes of Mont-Valier, in the Pyrenees.
“On December 8, 2024, he will be present with us”. “At the end of the year, we will see the arrow in the sky of Paris”enthused General Georgelin less than a month before his death, on July 21, during the dress rehearsal for the assembly of the first floor of the spire of the cathedral in Briey (Meurthe-et-Moselle). “General Georgelin will never see with his eyes the reopening of Notre-Dame to the French, of which he will have been the incomparable craftsman. But on December 8, 2024, he will be present with us, when it reopens, in another way, in the emotion that we owe him”commented the Elysée Palace at the end of its tribute statement.
Emmanuel Macron’s tribute. “With the death of General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the Nation loses one of its great soldiers. France, one of its great servants. And Notre-Dame, the architect of its rebirth”, had greeted the head of state. The announcement of his death had also sparked a shower of tributes. His funeral will be celebrated on August 31 in his native village of Aspet, in Haute-Garonne.