page_title: Lech Kaczyński
section_title: State funeral
hierarchical_section_title: Lech Kaczyński / Death / State funeral
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Grobowiec Pary Prezydenckiej. Fotografia z dnia, kiedy Tusk zeznawał w sprawie zaniedbań smoleńskich.
context_page_description: Lech Aleksander Kaczyński was a Polish lawyer and politician who served as the Mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005 and as the President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010. Before his tenure as president, he previously served as President of the Supreme Audit Office from 1992 to 1995 and later Minister of Justice and Public Prosecutor General in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet from 2000 until his dismissal in July 2001.
  Born in Warsaw, he starred in a 1962 Polish film, The Two Who Stole the Moon, with his identical twin brother Jarosław. Kaczyński was a graduate of law and administration of Warsaw University. In 1980, he was awarded his PhD by Gdańsk University. In 1990, he completed his habilitation in labour and employment law. He later assumed professorial positions at Gdańsk University and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.
  During the communist period, Kaczyński was an activist in the pro-democratic anti-communist movement in Poland, the Workers' Defence Committee, as well as the Independent Trade Union movement. In August 1980, he became an adviser to the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee in the Gdańsk Shipyard and the Solidarity movement.
context_section_description: On 11 April 2010, President Kaczyński's body was returned to Poland, where he and his wife lay in state at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. The state funeral was held in Kraków on 18 April 2010. After a Roman Catholic mass at St. Mary's Basilica, the presidential couple were laid to rest in a coffin, which was placed in the antechamber of the Crypt Under the Tower of Silver Bells beneath the Wawel Cathedral. A significant number of foreign dignitaries were unable to attend the funeral as a result of air travel disruption in Europe following the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland.
caption: Sarcophagus of Lech and Maria in the Wawel Cathedral, Kraków
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