Bernadette Chirac has not been seen in public since 2020, but the former First Lady recently visited a special place, thanks to her daughter, according to “France Dimanche”…
Now aged 92, Bernadette Chirac is going through the end of her life out of sight. The former First Lady has not made a public appearance since 2019, when she appeared with Didier Deschamps for the launch of the Yellow Pieces. Then, we were able to see her again in a stolen photo published by France Sunday in 2020, walking through the streets of Paris. Since then, radio silence. But…
Bernadette Chirac: this place where she absolutely wanted to go “before leaving this world”
Physically weakened, Bernadette Chirac can still get around using her wheelchair. And, according to France Sundaythe widow of Jacques Chirac made a special request to those around her: she wanted to go to Notre-Dame de Paris, after its reopening in December 2024.Before leaving this world, the nonagenarian, so pious, wanted to go there to contemplate this titanic restoration“, we read.
It was her daughter Claude Chirac who granted the wish of this practicing Catholic who “would have taken refuge in prayer“.”Thanks to the intervention of his daughter, Claude, a discreet visit was able to be organized in the morning. Installed in a wheelchair, the widow spent a long time out of sight in the Saint-Ferdinand chapel, one of the 29 private chapels in the cathedral.“, adds the magazine.
There is another place that Bernadette Chirac would like to see again before leaving this world: the Château de Bity, a beautiful building located in Corrèze and purchased with Jacques Chirac in 1969.The castle is not at all abandoned, it is maintained and there are people who come there. A cleaning lady comes there every week to clean. And the daughter, Claude Chirac, regularly comes to the castle with her husband“, assured Purepeople the manager of the restaurant Le Pêcheur de Lune, located in the village next door.
Bernadette Chirac: what does her daily life look like today?
It is now her daughter, Claude Chirac, who takes daily care of the former First Lady, while her health deteriorates. “I am his caregiver, as I was my father’s. I’m here every day. I organize the rotation of caregivers who come. I do what hundreds of thousands of French people do“, Claude declared to The Tribunein 2023. An anonymous relative, for his part, assured the Figaro that Bernadette Chirac had “still his whole head.”
But Bernadette Chirac does not want to be seen by the French as weakened and would live “cloistered in her apartment in the 7th arrondissement” of Paris, according to France Sunday. Yet, The Parisian assured in 2019 that the Chirac couple had left the 7th arrondissement for the benefit of a private mansion on rue de Tournon, in the 6th arrondissement, belonging to François Pinault, “for trivial wheelchair accessibility questions.” After the death of her husband, would Bernadette Chirac have wanted to leave the place to return to the chic 7th arrondissement?
