Five years after a devastating fire, Notre Dame is preparing for a glorious resurrection in less than a month. The politically embattled president wants to do the same.
Stefan Brändle, Paris/ch media
On December 7, Paris will regain its landmark and spiritual center. Representatives of French President Emmanuel Macron and Archbishop Laurent Ulrich announced on separate occasions on Wednesday that Notre Dame, which was largely destroyed in April 2019, will reopen in less than a month.
Even in the rain, Notre Dame now sparkles in bright colors.Image: trapezoid
On December 7, Macron will invite about 2,000 high-level guests to attend the new inauguration ceremony. The next day, Sunday and the Feast of Our Lady of the Church, several bishops will celebrate the first four-hour Mass in the early Gothic cathedral on the Ile de Seine. The following week, the public will be allowed to return to the monument after five and a half years. By then, Notre-Dame will eventually become the spiritual and geographical center of France (as the starting point for counting kilometers across the country), combining church and cultural heritage.
In April 2019, Notre Dame de Paris burned.Photo credit: AP/AP
Macron wants modern church windows
Some construction work is still ongoing, as evidenced by the remaining scaffolding outside the choir section. The forecourt will also be completely redesigned, with no underground parking. It's unclear whether the windows in individual churches will have the modern design that Macron wants. The politically isolated president had previously had to abandon his controversial idea to replace the iconic spire on the roof ridge with a modern and rather bold building.
The interior of the church, which had been darkened over the centuries, is now gleaming with shiny limestone walls. Thanks to large and small donations totaling 850 million euros, the 12th-century cathedral has been given a new look. This “France's success” masks doomsayers about the country's decline, the president's office said on Wednesday. France completed the construction tasks on schedule and proved its reputation as a “nation of builders”.
Macron climbs onto the roof
Macron will visit the restored cathedral next week to thank hundreds of workers and craftsmen for their hard work and climb to the roof with a camera. On December 7, as Master of Ceremonies, he wanted to deliver a speech in front of state guests and artists from around the world that, according to those around him, would be “very touching”.
French President Emmanuel Macron.Image: trapezoid
The president's appearance is intended to be the epitome of a cascade of lights from the Eiffel Tower to the cathedral. But Notre Dame’s renaissance is hardly a political fountain of youth for the president. He had to abandon the strongest image of delivering a speech in the renovated nave. France has a strict separation of church and state and does not allow Republican presidents to give formal speeches in religious buildings. So he had to set up a tent in the forecourt of Notre Dame. Church representatives and bishops were also divided. According to Paris media reports, the Archbishop of Paris made it clear that there was no question of using building donations for presidential appearances. However, a separate appeal for donations for the inauguration “failed” compared with the generous donations for reconstruction, as Le Canard Enchaîné writes in its new edition.
On Wednesday, the Elysée Palace could not reveal which celebrities would take part in the “Macron parade” – as the satirical Disclosure newspaper put it. The Vatican has apparently said no: Pope Francis is said to have not agreed to Macron's urging. A few days later he preferred to visit the French island of Corsica. (bzbasel.ch)
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