For the first time in 200 years, Notre Dame cathedral was unable to hold Christmas Eve mass this year due to a fire that destroyed its structure back in April.
French Catholics instead gathered at the premises of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois church, a few hundred metres away from the Paris landmark, for a service celebrated by the cathedral’s rector Patrick Chauvet.
One would recall that 12th-century cathedral was ravaged by fire back in April 2019. The fire had a devastating effect on the roof and collapsed all the pillar of the Cathedral.
One source told odunews that the toughest parts of the cleanup effort is cutting down the 50,000 tubes of old scaffolding that crisscrossed the back of the edifice.
According to the source, “there’s a need to remove completely the scaffolding in order to make the building safe so in 2021 we will probably start the restoration of the cathedral,” Chauvet said. “Once the scaffolding is removed, we need to assess the state of the cathedral, the quantity of stones to be removed and replaced.”
He also estimated that it would take another three years after that to make it safe enough for people to re-enter the cathedral, but that the full restoration will take longer.
It is indeed a very unusual phenomenon in the history of the aged long Cathedral. For the first time in about 200 years, the church did not host a Christmas eve serve within it premises. One will recall that regardless of the Nazi occupation in the second world war, the church was still opened.
It was only being forced during the anti-Catholic revolutionary period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
In a bid to restore and preserve the dignity of the age longed historical site, the French president, Emmanuel Macron,has set a timetable of five years to completely repair the 800-year-old building, which remains shrouded in scaffolding with a vast crane looming over it.
The culture ministry said in October that nearly €1bn (£856m) had been pledged or raised for the reconstruction.
