NEW YORK -- Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo was eulogized Tuesday by his son, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who called his father "the keynote speaker for our better angels."
The sitting governor praised his father as a "humanist," more than a politician, whose "politics were more of a personal belief system: It was who he was, not what he did."
The funeral service, held at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, was the final public tribute to the three-term Democratic governor.
"Mario himself made it quite clear that he wanted a simple local funeral," the Rev. George Witt, the pastor at the church, said at the beginning of the service.
But the ceremony carried the hallmarks of an official send-off for a statesman, with state troopers standing at attention outside and scores of political leaders inside. The crowd of hundreds included former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Witt acknowledged that the former governor's request was "hard to pull off."
Andrew Cuomo remembered his father as being motivated by his own deeply held belief system and fully at peace with himself, regardless of the reaction from others or the political backlash.
He recalled sharing an Albany apartment with his father when they were younger, drinking wine and debating politics. He reminisced about his father's zeal playing one-on-one in basketball and his singular tenacity.
Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that his father was frustrated by some of the realities of being governor, like the tedium of running a sprawling bureaucracy and sparring with legislators.
But he cared about bettering the lives of the people of New York; about being a force for good; and, above all else, about doing the right thing.
"At his core, at his best, he was a philosopher, and he was a poet, and he was an advocate, and he was a crusader," Cuomo said.
Mario Cuomo led New York as governor from 1983 through 1994. His keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention catapulted him to the national stage, with many questioning why the popular governor never ran for higher office.
"Why didn't he run for president, people ask? Because he didn't want to. That's all," his son said Tuesday.
For a man known for reflection, the funeral was chance for others to reflect on Cuomo one last time before he was laid to rest.
Cuomo, 82, who died in his Manhattan home Thursday evening, was not one to shy away from talking about his mortality.
When asked about the life he hoped to lead and the principles that guided him, the former New York governor and devout Roman Catholic would often point to St. Thomas More, the adviser to Henry VIII who opposed the king's break with Rome and was eventually beheaded.
"Thomas More was a moralist," Cuomo wrote in an appreciation of More. "I could use him as a spiritual umpire telling me whether some action or ambition I had stumbled into or contrived was fair or foul."
The proceedings began Tuesday with state troopers lining up in the snow outside the church along Park Avenue. A slow procession of bagpipe players and drummers led the hearse bearing Cuomo's coffin to the doors of the church.
Christopher Cuomo, his youngest son, was among the pallbearers who carried the coffin, draped with a New York state flag, into the Upper East Side church, which was founded in 1851.
Andrew Cuomo said during the funeral that he believes his father's spirit lives on.
"His spirit lives in all those outsiders and those striving to get their chance to join the family of New York."
Information for this article was contributed by John Dorman and Thomas Kaplan of The New York Times.
A Section on 01/07/2015