Former President Jimmy Carter’s official state funeral will be held Jan. 9, the same day of a national day of mourning over his passing that was announced by President Joe Biden on Sunday.
Biden is expected to deliver a eulogy for the former president.
Carter, the 39th U.S. president and first to reach age 100, died on Sunday. He had been in hospice care since February 2023 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he lived with his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter. The former first lady died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96.
Maranatha Baptist Church, where the former president was a member and taught Sunday school for many years, will hold a prayer vigil on Monday evening.
Biden said in remarks last year that Carter had asked him to deliver the eulogy at his funeral before catching himself and adding, “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that.”
Carter and Biden fostered a close relationship over many decades, with Carter, a former governor of Georgia, telling how Biden supported him when he ran for president. In pre-recorded remarks during the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Carter announced his support for then-candidate Biden, saying, “When I ran for president in 1976, Joe Biden was my first and most effective supporter in the Senate.” He added, “For decades, he has been my loyal and dedicated friend.”
For Carter’s 100th birthday in October, Biden recognized him with a direct-to-camera birthday message shared with CBS News, saying: “Mr. President, you’ve always been a moral force for our nation and the world. I recognized that as a young senator. That’s why I supported you so early. You’re a voice of courage, conviction, compassion, and most of all, a beloved friend of Jill and me and our family.”
The president and first lady Jill Biden visited Carter in April 2021, soon after Biden took office, spending almost an hour with the 39th president and his wife.
The two presidents last saw each other at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in November 2023, where Biden said he had the opportunity to speak briefly with Carter and tell him how much he loved him.
In a statement on Truth Social on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump also paid tribute to Carter, writing that “[t]he challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans.”
Trump added, “For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his global human rights work, including “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.” Through his work with the Carter Center, which he established in 1982 with his wife Rosalynn, Carter spent decades working in developing nations on efforts to restore human rights and build democratic institutions.