Reopening of Notre Dame de Paris: What Is To Be Expected?

We have a date! 8 December 2024. The side chapels may not be finished until 2030, but the Church will be open for worship and tourists.

From The European Conservative

By Hélène De Lauzun, PhD

The restoration work will have been an undertaking on a totally unprecedented scale—a material experience, but also a spiritual one, of which our contemporary era offers few examples.

While the French capital has launched the countdown to D-500 before the start of the 2024 Olympic Games, another deadline eagerly awaited by Parisians is approaching: the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral after the terrible fire in April 2019 that almost caused its destruction. The official date has been announced: 8 December 2024, on the occasion of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

On this date, the cathedral is expected to be reopened for worship as well as for tourist visits: this is what the rector of Notre-Dame de Paris, Msgr. Ribageau-Dumas, confirmed in a hearing before members of parliament at the beginning of March 2023, making official the information already divulged by General Georgelin, who is in charge of the restoration of the building, in January. This date will not, however, mark the end of the work, but “once opened, the church will not be closed again,” the rector insisted to his interlocutors. The redevelopment of the cathedral’s surroundings, which are under the authority of the Paris City Council, will take longer. The restoration of the chapels will not be completed in 2024 either, but should continue until 2028, perhaps even 2030.

By 8 December 2024, the altar will be installed in its final place. The authorities are expecting an unprecedented influx of visitors: up to 14 million, compared to the 12 million the monument attracted each year before the fire. To accommodate this flood of tourists and pilgrims, the staffing will have to be completely restructured. The site employed 67 people before the fire. Only seven are still working. The rector of the cathedral anticipates that a two-month period will be necessary to train the staff before visits can resume.

The restoration work will have been an undertaking on a totally unprecedented scale—a material experience, but also a spiritual one, such as our contemporary era now offers very few. Rector Msgr. Ribadeau-Dumas spoke to the members of parliament about this experience and paid tribute to the many tradesmen involved in the reconstruction. He was particularly struck by the testimony of a rope worker, who told him: “Even though I am not a believer, I have never experienced such emotion when working on a site, and it will be hard to do another one afterwards.” Msgr. Ribadeau-Dumas in turn confided the great emotion he experienced during a trip to Anjou, to go and bless the trunks dedicated to the carpentry. “When the woodcutters asked me to bless their axes before cutting the trees down, something very strong happened for me as a priest—a moment I will never forget,” he said.

While the announcement of an official date for the reopening of the world’s most famous cathedral is a source of joy for visitors and worshippers from around the world, there is still uncertainty in many areas of the restoration and redevelopment work. Discussions about the alleged ‘need’ to modernise the cathedral and its decorations have caused a stir, not only within the French Catholic Church but also more widely, with many rightly concerned that the church they have known and loved will not be restored to its former glory. 

A competition was launched to find the artists in charge of the new liturgical furniture. 69 candidates applied, and 5 finalists were selected—a choice far from being unanimous. After deliberation by an artistic committee gathered around the archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Ulrich, only one will be in charge. He is to create the baptistery, located at the entrance to the nave; the altar; the tabernacle placed above the historic altar designed by the architect Viollet-le-Duc; the cathedra to the north; and finally the ambo, located next to the statue of the Virgin, to the south. 

In the columns of Aleteia, the American journalist and writer James Haggerty expressed his concern about a selection that he considers highly questionable, as the artists were chosen according to vague criteria in which faith and respect for tradition were clearly not taken into account. He thus deplores “the total absence of any reference, even in passing, to what is the origin, the foundation and the model of all that is at issue: French Art, francigenum opus, so called because it was born in the Ile de France.” Moreover, he takes issue with the fact that the main target of this major operation—Our Lady—is simply not included in the elucidations of the selected artists:

It is the liturgical furniture of the cathedral of cathedrals, Notre-Dame de Paris. An artistic and spiritual beacon of humanity. And here it is: those who claim to restore its liturgical furnishings do not have a single word for it in the justification of their claim! They have not a single word for what SHE has been, nor for what SHE is, nor for what SHE will never cease to be. Not a thought, not a word for HER, so afraid are they in their coterie of not being contemporary mainstream.

In the autumn of 2021, a petition by personalities from the world of art and history—signed by the author of these lines among others—was already concerned about the risks weighing on the cathedral’s restoration project, and the diocese’s opaque intentions in liturgical and artistic matters. The fears of the signatories, published by Le Figaro, unfortunately seem to have been perfectly founded.

The development of the square and the area around the cathedral, left to the responsibility of the Paris City Council, is also cause for concern. The project chosen by the city council, which is relatively simple, would at least have the advantage of not disfiguring the building with invasive contemporary constructions. However, the disappearance of the closed John XXIII Square behind the cathedral, which is to become an ‘open garden’ far from the spirit of the green setting designed at the time of the July Monarchy, is to be deplored.

From now on, all that remains is to hold one’s breath while waiting to be able to pay homage to Notre-Dame, the most famous and noble of Parisian ladies.