King to attend state funeral for Germanwings victims at Sagrada Família on Monday evening

Barcelona (ACN).- A state funeral for the victims of the Germanwings plane that was intentionally crashed in the French Alps in March is to be held this Monday evening at 6pm (CET) at Barcelona's Sagrada Família basilica. The flight was going from Barcelona to Düsseldorf and, out of the 150 casualties, 53 were living in Catalonia. The ceremony follows the state funeral that took place in Cologne's Cathedral 10 days ago. The King of Spain, Felipe VI, is going to be attending the Barcelona ceremony, together with his wife, Queen Letizia. There has been some controversy over the fact that the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona, Lluís Martínez Sistach, has chosen to celebrate a Catholic mass, instead of holding a multi-confessional ceremony in order to represent as much as possible the victims' different faiths or secular beliefs. Regarding language diversity, the ceremony will be held in Spanish, Catalan, German, French, English and Greek. In the German ceremony, Catalan was not included, nor was it included on the memorial plaque set at the crash site.

All Catalan political parties, including those with a Conservative and a Christian-democrat tradition, stated that they would have preferred a multi-confessional ceremony to bid farewell the victims of the Germanwings flight, instead of only holding a Catholic mass. However, the Archbishop of Barcelona, Cardinal Martínez-Sistach, took the decision to celebrate a mass following only Catholic rituals, since the ceremony was taking place at a Catholic church, the Sagrada Familia basilica, designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí.

Sectors of Catalonia's Catholic church strongly disagree with the ceremony's format

Progressive sectors of the Catalan Catholic church, such as the association Església Plural, have also expressed their "shame" and "pain" regarding the ceremony's design, which excludes other faiths. They consider it to be "an imposition from Barcelona's Archbishop". They suggested that the people who attend the ceremony and strongly disagree with the exclusion of other faiths should openly show their disagreement in a respectful way. They suggested that they could opt to not receive communion and, instead, stand and stay in their pew.

Representatives from other religions, such as the Protestant and Jewish communities, have also protested the Catholic-only ceremony. They regretted that the ceremony "will not represent the plurality of the victims' beliefs", "nor the plurality of our society". In addition, they reminded that in Germany and France, the farewell ceremonies showed this respect. In France, a civil ceremony was held, as was a second multi-confessional ceremony. In Germany, an ecumenical mass took place in Cologne's Cathedral, mixing both Protestant and Catholic rituals.

The Catalan Parliament will receive relatives of the victims before the ceremony

Before the ceremony, the Catalan Parliament will be holding a reception for the relatives of the victims that want to attend. The reception will be held around 4.30 pm and aims to show them the Catalan people's support and express their sorrow for the tragedy. The Catalan Parliament has rented buses to transport the attendees to the Sagrada Família for the state funeral.