Pope Francis will celebrate inaugural Mass at reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, claim well-placed sources

A senior Vatican correspondent at a major French newspaper has claimed that Pope Francis will travel to Paris for the reopening of the iconic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris that is due to occur at the end of the year. The inaugural Mass to mark what is in effect the saving of the famed cathedral, The post Pope Francis will celebrate inaugural Mass at reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, claim well-placed sources appeared first on Catholic Herald.

Sep 11, 2024 - 09:00

Pope Francis will celebrate inaugural Mass at reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, claim well-placed sources

A senior Vatican correspondent at a major French newspaper has claimed that Pope Francis will travel to Paris for the reopening of the iconic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris that is due to occur at the end of the year.

The inaugural Mass to mark what is in effect the saving of the famed cathedral, counted as one of the world’s greatest and which was significantly damaged by a ferocious blaze in 2019; and to mark its return to Paris, to France and to the wider Christian world, will take place on 8 December 2024.

Caroline Pigozzi, at French financial newspaper La Tribune, says that “an influential Vatican prelate” has confirmed to her that “His Holiness will come to the inauguration of the restored Notre-Dame”.

Pigozzi, who is given exclusive access on the papal plane and frequently also accompanied Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI on their international travels, has reported that the Pope will arrive on 7 December to participate in a ceremony in which the French State will symbolically hand over the cathedral to the Catholic Church.

He will thereafter celebrate High Mass on 8 December with Mgr Laurent Ulrich, the Archbishop of Paris. He will, it is claimed, then leave swiftly for Rome to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as is custom.

While the Pope has placed significant “focus…on the peripheries” – as he advised clergy and religious in Papua New Guinea in early September – it is believed that a visit to Notre-Dame de Paris was judged not “one of his priorities”.

However, while travelling to Jakarta on his present 12-day tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania, the Pope was confronted directly by a journalist who asked whether he would be attending the reopening Mass at Notre Dame.

“We are studying that…,” he responded with a smile described as “wry” by the online Catholic media site Aleteia.

The trip would reportedly be the first time that a pope has visited the cathedral since Benedict XVI knelt before relics of the Crown of Thorns there in 2008.

Since the conflagration at Notre Dame, which when it broke out was feared might destroy the entire cathedral, France has seen a worrying spate of church fires, some of which have been attributed to and confirmed as being caused by arson attacks.

Questions remain over what exactly caused the fire to break out in Notre Dame on 15 April 2019, a moment when Paris, along the rest of France and much of the world held its breath and prayed that the fire would be contained and the cathedral saved.

Photo: Restoration works continue at Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris, France, 8 August 2024. (Photo by MAGALI COHEN/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images.)