Emmanuel Macron visits the construction site of Notre Dame and its new spire one year after the reopening, scheduled for 8 December 2024, and invites Pope Francis to the ceremony on that occasion.
“I hope he can come, In any case we will invite him, but it is not up to me to answer for him,” said the French president interviewed by France 2.
The Parisian cathedral has been closed for over four years, since the fire that partially devastated it on 15 April 2019. Macron today announced his intention to create contemporary stained glass windows "to leave the mark of the 21st century" on Notre Dame.
«We are respecting the times», he claimed, saying that the cathedral «is a formidable image of hope and of a France that knows how to rebuild. After the dizzying visit to the spire at 96 meters high, the president with the worker's helmet went down to the central nave, accompanied by his wife Brigitte, to speak to the press.
The old nineteenth-century windows, as well as the cockerel that fell with the implosion of the spire during the fire, "will find their place in a museum of the Notre Dame factory, which will be inaugurated in the nearby spaces of the Hotel-Dieu", he specified Macron.
(Unioneonline/L)
