On April 9, 1904, the funeral procession of Gaudenzio Bonfigli, the Catholic Archbishop of Alexandria, weaved through the streets of the city heading towards the Cathedral of St. Catherine. Mounted police led the procession, followed by bands and banners of Catholic religious orders and schools. In the middle lay the body, and subsequent rows of mourners, government representatives, diplomatic and consular corps, the judiciary, clergy, state administrators, municipal representatives, various “foreign” communities, bankers, traders and notables marched behind. It must have been a grand sight, a public spectacle of mourning and power orchestrated by the French consulate in Alexandria. This paper takes Bonfigli’s funeral as its lens to explore the meeting point between the religious ritual of mourning and the demonstration of power and authority. Using documents found in the French diplomatic archives, including correspondence between various consulates and governmental administrators planning the memorial, the funeral plan and seating chart, and newspaper articles documenting Bonfigli’s death and burial, I argue that this funeral represented much more than the religious burial of a well-known man. Taking place just one day after the signing of the Entente Cordiale, this funeral also reflected the delicate dance of European power rivalries in Alexandria. The performance of mourning laid out in this procession and funeral was the result of days of negotiations between the French consulate, the Italian consulate, the British colonial government and various Egyptian national and municipal governmental representatives in Alexandria. It was not a haphazard event; determining the participants and their role in the funeral reflected the position of those involved in the broader political spectrum. The Archbishop’s funeral illuminates the use of religious ritual and diplomatic authority between various European communities to exercise and announce their power in the shadow of British colonial rule in Egypt.