This was the state funeral of Desmond Tutu, the ‘national conscience’ of South Africa

(CNN) – Family, friends and dignitaries gathered for Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s official state funeral on New Years Day in Cape Town, culminating a week of events honoring a man long considered South Africa’s moral compass.

Tutu died last Sunday at the age of 90, sparking a worldwide flood of tributes to the anti-apartheid hero. He had been in poor health for several years.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who delivered the main eulogy during the service at St. George’s Cathedral on Saturday, hailed Tutu as “our national conscience.” Tutu’s widow, Nomalizo Leah, known as “Mama Leah,” sat in a wheelchair in the front row of the congregation, wrapped in a purple scarf, the color of her husband’s clerical robe.

For decades, Tutu was one of the leading voices lobbying the South African government to end apartheid, the country’s official policy of racial segregation and the rule of the white minority. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, before apartheid ended in the early 1990s and Nelson Mandela, Imprisoned for a long time, he became the nation’s first black president.

The revered fighter against apartheid will be remembered as one of the most important voices of the 20th century. However, his funeral was moderate: Before he died, Tutu asked for a simple service and the cheapest casket available, according to two of his foundations. Tutu’s funeral was limited to just 100 people, in accordance with current covid-19 regulations.

In his speech at St. George’s Cathedral, a church famous for its role in the resistance against apartheid, Ramaphosa described Tutu as “a man with a faith as deep as it is enduring” and “a crusader in the fight for freedom, for justice, equality and peace, not only in South Africa, his country of birth, but also around the world. “

“Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been our moral compass and our national conscience,” Ramaphosa said. “He saw our country as a ‘rainbow nation’, emerging from the shadow of apartheid, united in its diversity, with freedom and equal rights for all.”

“He hugged everyone who had ever felt the cold wind of exclusion and they in turn hugged him,” Ramaphosa added, praising Tutu’s advocacy for LGBTQ rights, campaigning against child marriage and supporting the Palestinian cause.

“His was a life lived honestly and fully. He has left the world a better place. We remember him with a smile,” Ramaphosa said.

Tutu’s daughter Naomi also paid tribute to her father and thanked the audience for their prayers. “Thank you, Dad, for the many ways you showed us love, for the many times you challenged us, for the many times you comforted us,” she said.

The Rev. Michael Nuttall, the retired Bishop of Natal who was once Tutu’s assistant, delivered the main sermon, calling Tutu a “giant among us morally and spiritually.”

His voice cracking at times, Nuttal said that being Tutu’s assistant between 1989 and 1996 “struck a chord perhaps in the hearts and minds of many people: a dynamic black leader and his white deputy in the last years of apartheid. We were a foretaste, so to speak, of what could be in our wayward and divided nation. “

In a video message played at the ceremony, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said that an Archbishop of Canterbury paying tribute to Archbishop Tutu was “like a mouse paying tribute to an elephant.”

Tutu’s body will be cremated in a private ceremony after Saturday’s Requiem Mass and will then be buried behind the cathedral pulpit.

Events were planned across the country to give South Africans the opportunity to collectively mourn “the Arch,” as it was known, while still practicing social distancing.

A memory of a week began this Monday with the ringing of the bells in the Cathedral of St. George, which held a special place in the heart of the late archbishop, so much so that he asked that his ashes be buried there in a special deposit.

On Wednesday, several religious leaders gathered outside Tutu’s old home on Vilakazi Street, where his friend and ally Nelson Mandela also grew up, in Soweto, a Johannesburg township, for a series of events. Another memorial service was held in Cape Town on Wednesday, and Tutu’s wife, Nomalizo Leah Tutu, met with friends of the late archbishop on Thursday for an “intimate” gathering.

The South Africans also paid their respects to Tutu’s simple pine coffin this Thursday and Friday as he lay in the cathedral.

Tutu was born on October 7, 1931 in Klerksdorp, a city in the South African province of Transvaal, the son of a teacher and a domestic worker. Tutu had plans to become a doctor, thanks in part to a childhood outbreak of tuberculosis that landed him in the hospital for more than a year, and he even qualified for medical school, he said.

But his parents could not pay the fees, so he devoted himself to teaching.

“The government was awarding scholarships for people who wanted to become teachers,” he told the Academy of Achievement. “I became a teacher and I have not regretted it.”

Yet he was appalled at the state of South African black schools, and even more appalled when the Bantu Education Act was passed in 1953 that racially segregated the nation’s educational system. He resigned in protest. Soon after, the Bishop of Johannesburg agreed to accept him for the priesthood (Tutu believed it was because he was a college-educated black man, a rarity in the 1950s) and took up his new calling.

He was ordained a priest in 1960 and spent the 1960s and early 1970s alternating between London and South Africa. He returned definitively to his country of origin in 1975, when he was appointed dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. As the government became increasingly oppressive, detaining blacks, laying down burdensome laws, Tutu became increasingly outspoken.

CNN’s Larry Madowo, Chandler Thornton, Allegra Goodwin and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this report.