[CubaNews] CNA: Chess champion Bobby Fisher requested Catholic burial in Iceland

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chess champion Bobby Fisher requested Catholic burial in Iceland 

Washington DC, January 23 (CNA).-Legendary chess player Bobby Fischer, who
made history by dethroning the Soviet chess king Boris Spassky in 1972,
asked to be buried as a Catholic, according to officials of the Catholic
Church in Iceland, where he had been living since 1992.

The famous and eccentric chess player, who died last Thursday at the age of
64, was buried Tuesday in Iceland during a private Catholic ceremony.

The French news agency AFP reported that Fischer, who was born into a Jewish
family in New York, expressly asked to be buried according to the Catholic
rite.  Father Jakob Rolland of the Diocese of Reykiavik, the capital of
Iceland, presided at the funeral.

The former champion "had expressed his desire to have a catholic burial and
we honored that" with a ceremony that took place in Laugardaela, a small
city 50 kilometers south of the capital," Father Rolland said.

Only five people attended the ceremony, including his Japanese friend Miyoko
Watai, who traveled from Japan to attend to the funeral.  Father Rolland
said she organized the funeral together with a group of Fischer's friends in
Iceland.

"I don't know if he converted to the Catholic faith, but that doesn't mean
he didn't," said Father Rolland, in reference to the reserved manner in
which Fischer discussed his private life and his personal decisions.

By becoming a citizen of Iceland, Fischer escaped serving a prison sentence
in the United States for money he earned during a tournament in 1992 in the
former Yugoslavia-at that time under a UN embargo-where he again faced and
defeated Russian champion Spassky.



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