Desmond Tutu’s Official Memorial Service. All The Photos

Family, companions and dignitaries gathered at Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s official state memorial service on New Year’s Day in Cape Town, which was seven days of occasions honoring a man since a long time ago viewed as the ethical compass of South Africa.

Tutu died on Sunday December 26, 2021 aged 90, starting a global overflowing of tributes for the counter politically-sanctioned racial segregation saint. He had been in chronic weakness for quite a long time before his demise.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who conveyed the main commendation during the funeral at St. George’s Cathedral on Saturday, hailed Tutu as:

“our national conscience“

Tutu’s widow Nomalizo Leah, known as sat in a wheelchair in the first seat of the gathering, dressed in a purple scarf, the colour of her husband’s clerical robes.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was as much referred to for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist as his religious status. He was the first black Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and afterward Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996. He worked alongside Nelson Mandela driving negotiations to end politically-sanctioned racial segregation in the nation and present a multi-racial majority rule government.

For decades, Tutu was one of the essential voices pushing the South African government to end apartheid, the country’s true strategy of racial isolation and White minority rule. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, before apartheid ended in the mid 1990s and the long detained Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president.

The revered anti-apartheid fighter will be remembered as one of the most important voices of the 20th century. However, his funeral was quietened: as in, before he died, Tutu asked for a simple service and the cheapest available coffin, according to two of his foundations.

Tutu’s funeral was limited to just 100 people, in line with current Covid-19 regulations.

In his address at St. George’s Cathedral, a church famous for its role in the resistance against apartheid, Ramaphosa described Tutu as “a man with a faith as deep as it was abiding,” and “a crusader in the struggle for freedom, for justice, for equality and for peace, not just in South Africa, the country of his birth, but around the world as well.”

“Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been our moral compass and national conscience,” Ramaphosa said. “He saw our country as a ‘rainbow nation’, emerging from the shadow of apartheid, united in its diversity, with freedom and equal rights for all. He embraced all who had ever felt the cold wind of exclusion and they in turn embraced him,”

Ramaphosa added, praising Tutu’s advocacy for LGBTQ rights, campaigning against child marriage, and support for the Palestinian cause.

“His was a life lived honestly and completely. He has left the world a better place. We remember him with a smile,” Ramaphosa said.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter Naomi also honored her dad and expressed gratitude toward people in general for their supplications. “Thank you, daddy, for the many ways you showed us love, for the many times you challenged us, for the many times you comforted us,” she said.

Reverend Michael Nuttall, the resigned Bishop of Natal who was once Tutu’s representative, conveyed the fundamental lesson, considering Tutu a “giant among us morally and spiritually.”

In a video message played at the ceremony, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said an Archbishop of Canterbury giving a tribute to Archbishop Tutu was “like a mouse giving a tribute to an elephant.”

Tutu’s body will be cremated in a private service later Saturday’s memorial mass and will then, at that point, be entombed behind the lectern at the house of prayer.

The week-long funeral started Monday with the ringing of the chimes at St. George’s Cathedral, which held an extraordinary spot in the late diocese supervisor’s heart, so much so that he requested his ashes be interred there in a special repository.

On Wednesday, several religious leaders gathered outside Tutu’s former home on Vilakazi Street — where his friend and ally Nelson Mandela also grew up — in Soweto, a township in Johannesburg, for a series of events. Another memorial service was held Wednesday in Cape Town, and Tutu’s wife, Nomalizo Leah Tutu, met with friends of the late archbishop on Thursday for an “intimate” gathering.

South Africans also paid their respects before Tutu’s plain pine coffin on Thursday and Friday as it lay in state at the cathedral.
As South Africa mourns Desmond Tutu, so do LGBTQ groups, Palestinians and climate activists.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was ordained in 1960 and spent the ’60s and mid ’70s shifting back and forth among London and South Africa. He got back to his nation of origin for good in 1975, when he was delegated dignitary of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. As the government became increasingly tyrannical — detaining Black people, and establishing onerous laws — Tutu became increasingly outspoken.

https://www.oseiagyemang.com/south-africas-most-popular-figure-has-passed-on/