Former US President Gerald Ford has been remembered as a man who possessed the spiritual traits of humility, dignity, steadfast service to humanity and the ability to heal through forgiveness, reports Ecumenical News International.

"It isn't a surprise to me that he not only went to church, but could articulate his faith," Robert Edgar told ENI, who was elected to the US Congress in November 1974, just three months after Ford became president. He is now general secretary of the US National Council of Churches.

US President George W. Bush joined former presidents and Washington veterans to remember Ford, the 38th US president who died a week ago, as a "rock of stability".

Ford is revered for his pardon of Richard Nixon, strongly criticised at the time but now regarded by many historians as the key to ending America's greatest political crisis.

"President Ford's time in office was brief, but history will long remember the courage and common sense that helped restore trust in the workings of our democracy," Bush said.

Or as his father put it: "Jerry Ford's decency was the ideal remedy for the deception of Watergate," the scandal that drove Nixon to resign the presidency, reports Reuters.

Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and military leaders took part in the service alongside Ford's widow, Betty, 88, inside Washington's cavernous National Cathedral.