There was a time when the Catholic Church might decline to bestow a full Christian burial on individuals whose public lives were judged to be less than exemplary. The French writer Colette (recently portrayed by Keira Knightley in the eponymous film) was refused a church funeral because her life had been “scandalous”. The lady herself would not have denied the charge. But things have changed, and in death moral judgments about a person’s life are less likely to be articulated. The late president of France, Jacques Chirac, attracted somewhat mixed obituaries in the British press, and although he was successful as a politician, it was pointed out that he had been convicted of financial corruption and embezzlement – and that he was a serial philanderer, with, apparently, a boudoir built into his personal bus as mayor of Paris. As the Sunday Times columnist Camilla Long wrote, “His lack of control in his private life matched a lack of control in his public life.” Yet the French public chose not to count a man’s failings, in death, but to emphasise his achievements, as a well-liked political leader, who had wisely kept France out of the Iraq War. Church and state co-ordinated, in Paris, to provide Monsieur Chirac with an impressive farewell, as the line of mourners stretched over a mile to pay their respects. His magnificent Requiem Mass was concelebrated at the exquisite Church of Saint-Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement, attended by many dignitaries, and, of course, his family (though his dutiful and long-suffering wife, Bernadette, a practising Catholic, was too frail to attend). The Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, preached to the packed church from the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, emphasising our duty to pray for those who govern us. Today, the Church consigns a man’s life to the forgiveness of the Almighty. It is left to an increasingly sharp-tongued media to focus on the failings.