Around 400 people gathered on Saturday, February 8, at a famed cathedral in southeastern France to bid farewell to a two-and-a-half-year-old boy whose unexplained disappearance in 2023 shocked the country.

Emile Soleil was at the summer home of his grandparents in the Alpine hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet when he vanished in July 2023. A massive search involving police, soldiers, sniffer dogs, a helicopter and drones failed to find any sign of the boy. In the spring of 2024, the toddler's skull and teeth were discovered some 1.7 km from the village but the cause of death remains unexplained. Emile's mother and father were absent on the day of his disappearance.

Saturday's ceremony took place in the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, a medieval Gothic cathedral that houses relics of Mary Magdalene, making it Christianity's third most important tomb. Emile's parents, Marie and Colomban Soleil, attended. A pall-bearer was seen carrying a tiny white coffin containing the toddler's remains into the basilica as his father looked on. The ceremony was closed to journalists.

On Saturday afternoon, Emile was to be laid to rest in the town of La Bouilladisse where his parents live.

Two neighbors last saw the toddler walking alone on a street in Le Haut-Vernet, 1,200 meters up in the Alps on July 8, 2023. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts and tiny hiking shoes.