After homage by dignitaries, several hundred ordinary Parisians (among them professor Albert Jacquard, who struggled with the Abbé for the cause of homelessness) went to the Val-de-Grâce chapel to see Abbé Pierre's corpse. His funeral on 26 January 2007 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was attended by numerous distinguished people: President Jacques Chirac, former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, many French Ministers, and of course the Companions of Emmaus, who were placed at the front of the congregation in the cathedral, according to Abbé Pierre's last wishes. He was buried in a cemetery in Esteville, a small village in Seine-Maritime where he used to live. Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, evoked a possible beatification, but it seems unlikely in the near future.