Jean-Marie Le Pen has struck again ... although this time for a wedding.
The founder of the far-right French party National Front, now in the hands of his daughter Marine, was married by the Catholic rite this weekend, in a ceremony so surprising that even his children and grandchildren have found out only when revealing the press this Monday.
The far-right patriarch, at 92 years old officially removed from politics although he is still a figure in the ultra sphere, said “yes, I do” with Jany Le Pen, 88 years old and married to Le Pen for 30 civil matters .
The intimate ceremony took place this Saturday at the couple's house in Rueil-Malmaison, on the outskirts of Paris, according to the magazine
L'Obs.
A video broadcast by the ultra-right website Boulevard Voltaire showed the moment when the couple made their vows in the presence of half a dozen people, none of them members of the Le Pen family.
In fact, none of the three daughters of the founder of the FN (today renamed by his daughter Marine as National Regrouping) nor his eight grandchildren were even "aware" of the plans of the family patriarch, a source told the agency France Presse from the environment of the current far-right leader, who in 2017 reached the second presidential round against Emmanuel Macron, equaling the milestone of his father in 2002, when he was defeated by Jacques Chirac (1995-2007).
Yann, the eldest of the Le Pen sisters, daughters of Jean-Marie's first marriage to Pierrette Lalanne, admitted in
Le Figaro
that she was upset with the unexpected news.
“It is quite disturbing.
We wonder why.
How has it been?
Finding out from the press is humiliating and painful for us, her daughters, and for all her grandchildren (…) Her daughters are all very astonished, ”said the mother of Marion Maréchal, Le Pen's best-known granddaughter and considered the main political rival in the right of her aunt Marine, although for the moment the young ex-deputy has officially left politics.
For the eldest of the Le Pen, there is something also that "is not normal" since, he said, "her environment is not very Catholic."
The ceremony was "very spiritual and happy," he quotes
a friend of the couple
in
L'Obs
.
Jean-Marie and Jany Le Pen have been together since 1986, a year before the former president of the FN divorced his first wife, with whom he never married religiously.
In 1991, the couple married civilly.
The new Catholic wedding was officiated by the traditionalist priest Philippe Laguérie - who was part of the mass in Latin - and had the authorization of the Bishop of Nanterre, Matthieu Rougé, since the marriage was not celebrated in a church, according to the French press.
Laguérie,
L'Obs
noted
,
comes from an ultra-conservative branch of Catholicism and defended Le Pen in 1987 when he declared that the gas chambers were “a detail in the history of World War II”, which is why he was condemned by the justice, one of the many sentences for his controversial statements throughout his long career.
Although the Le Pen family grew apart over the years, especially since Marine, whom Jean-Marie appointed as his successor at the helm of today's RN, the three daughters celebrated in June 2018 the 90th birthday of the patriarch who now has them. left out of his most intimate ceremony.
