{"id":139764,"date":"2017-12-17T08:42:51","date_gmt":"2017-12-17T13:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=139764"},"modified":"2017-12-17T08:42:51","modified_gmt":"2017-12-17T13:42:51","slug":"romanians-royals-turn-out-in-big-numbers-for-kings-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/12\/17\/romanians-royals-turn-out-in-big-numbers-for-kings-funeral\/","title":{"rendered":"Romanians, royals turn out in big numbers for king’s funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"H.M.<\/a>
H.M. King Michael I in historical city of Alba Iulia, Romania in 2007. (Photo By Emanuel Stoica [1] – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>BUCHAREST, Romania \u2014 Tens of thousands of Romanians joined European royals to pay their respects to late King Michael who was given a state funeral on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Michael, who ruled Romania twice before being forced to abdicate by the communists in 1947, died at age 96 in Switzerland on Dec. 5.<\/p>\n

Britain’s Prince Charles, Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, and Spain’s former King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, were among those at a pre-funeral service at the Royal Palace where Michael’s body had been laying in state for the past two days. The Swedish king saluted as Michael’s coffin was placed on a dais.<\/p>\n

Non-European royals attending the funeral included Princess Muna al-Hussein, mother of King Abdullah II of Jordan.<\/p>\n

Other royals including Henri, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Princess Astrid and Prince Lorenz of Belgium were joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis for a sung funeral service, led by the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Daniel.<\/p>\n

Bishops wafted incense in the small cathedral where Michael was crowned for the second time on Sept. 6, 1940. Michael, who was a great-great grandson of Queen Victoria, first became king aged 5 after his father Carol II eloped with his mistress and abdicated.<\/p>\n

In the hours before Michael’s coffin was taken out of the palace, Romanians gathered silently, many in tears, in Revolution Square. Church bells tolled around the country and a choir of priests sang as the coffin was taken out and was laid on a dais in the square.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the crowd cheered and shouted “King Michael!” as the coffin, led by Orthodox priests and a guard of honour, was transported by an army jeep toward the cathedral.<\/p>\n

Michael’s five daughters and his estranged grandson Nicholas Medforth-Mills, who was stripped of his title for allegedly fathering a child out of wedlock, walked behind the coffin.<\/p>\n

Mourner Georgeta Anastasiu, 60, said the late king had been “demonized by the communists, but in the end we found out the truth about him.”<\/p>\n

She called the king “the last moral example for Romanians.”<\/p>\n

His body will then be taken by a royal train to the central Romanian city of Curtea de Arges where he will be buried next to his wife, Anne de Bourbon-Parme, who died last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUCHAREST, Romania \u2014 Tens of thousands of Romanians joined European royals to pay their respects to late King Michael who …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":139765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[39290,39288,39289],"class_list":["post-139764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-w","tag-king-michael","tag-romanians","tag-royals-turn-out-in-big-numbers-for-kings-funeral","mauthors-alison-mutler","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}