PARIS (AFP-EJP)---France’s Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims united Monday in tribute to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the retired archbishop of Paris who died Sunday night aged 80.

Richard Prasquier, head of CRIF, the umbrella group of French secular organizations, voiced his sadness, saying Lustiger had played a "considerable historic role" in improving ties between Jews and Catholics, accompanying John Paul on his landmark trip to the Holy Land in 2000.

Prasquier, who travelled with Lustiger two years ago to Auschwitz, where his mother Gisele died in a Nazi gas chamber, said the cardinal had always "shown a great fraternity towards his community of origin."

Daniel Shek, Israel’s ambassador to France, paid tribute to the memory of Lustiger.

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"He held a very particular place in the heart of the Israelis," he said.

France’s chief rabbi, Joseph Sitruk, emphasized that Lustiger had played an “essential role” in the dialogue between Jews and Christians.

“My most moving souvenir is my last meeting with him at the hospital. “He told me again that he would never repudiate himself as a Jew, on the contrary. He said he was still Aaron and Cardinal Lustiger as well,” Sitruk said.

"This double identity make us become friends spontaneously," the rabbi said.

Originally named Aaron, Lustiger was born September 17, 1926, in Paris to a family of Polish practicing Jews.

When World War II broke out, Lustiger and his sister Arlette were sent by their parents to safety in the central city of Orleans. There, in 1940 and at age 14, he underwent a conversion in the cathedral of Orleans and was received into the Catholic Church later that year.

His mother Gisele ended up being deported to Auschwitz.

Created cardinal priest by pope John Paul II, he served as Paris archbishop for a quarter of a century, from 1981 to 2005.

Lustiger was a pivotal and highly respected figure in French religious life.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, on vacation in the United States, lamented the loss of "a great figure of the spiritual, moral, intellectual and of course religious life of our country."

The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, paid his respects to the cardinal’s memory in the name of the city, ahead of a funeral mass to be celebrated Friday at Notre Dame cathedral.

"Born in Montmartre, archbishop for a quarter of a century, he loved our city and forged an intense relationship with it, on the spiritual, intellectual and cultural levels," he said.

Tipped at one point as a potential successor to the late John Paul II, Lustiger, who was admitted to a clinic in April with an unspecified serious illness, was a larger-than-life figure on France’s religious scene.

Lustiger is to be buried Friday in Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.