’Our Lady of Paris’: Watching beauty on fire

Monday night, 6 p.m. Eastern / Midnight in Paris

Notre-Dame de Paris, meaning “Our Lady of Paris,” is a medieval Catholic cathedral, a sacred space of splendid beauty symbolic of French Gothic architecture. Built during the 12th century and completed in 1345, the cathedral’s stone walls and oak spires have stood tall and majestic over the city of Paris, a familiar presence on its own separate island along the banks of the Seine river. This cathedral represents the hopes and dreams of everyone. It’s also been the inspiration of great literature, too.

“Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of ages,” the author Victor Hugo wrote in “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.”

Regardless of one’s own faith, Notre-Dame has always opened its doors to people of all faiths and denominations. It is a vast and peaceful space filled with humility and pageantry, as well as relics, rites and rituals. Replete with its gigantic twin towers, 295-foot tall main spire, and flying buttresses, Notre-Dame has been a highly-identifiable symbol of Christianity – not only in the capital city of Paris and throughout France, but also worldwide, where it’s been a positive symbol for so many Catholic worshipers. This cathedral has been an essential place for spiritual renewal as well as a gathering place, too. Notre-Dame welcomes 30,000 visitors each day through its doors, about 13 million annually.

I’ve been privileged to visit Notre-Dame several times since 2000, to climb its bell towers and stand among its stone gargoyles – which provide a gorgeous and breathtaking view of Paris – to listen to organ concerts, and to worship in both French and English while sitting among the faithful in its sprawling pews.

Inside historic Notre-Dame, an abundance of beautiful art and artifacts that record so much of our religious history – and has been so magnificently restored and displayed – is likely gone from tonight’s horrific fire. Think of the architectural achievement of this cathedral; it’s something bigger than ourselves. Notre-Dame is one of the most recognizable places in the entire world. Now, much of its insides resemble a charred mess. I’m hopeful that the twin towers with their majestic bells can be saved. Late word from French fire officials seem to suggest they will.

I close my eyes, and inside Notre-Dame, I visualize the Nave, the many ornate side chapels, the majestic pipe organ with its 8,000 pipes unleashing joyful sounds. So much work by so many, so much history within its stone walls. Tonight, it is on the verge of being gone – during Holy Week of all times. Thank God, there doesn’t appear to be any injuries or loss of human life as far as we know. However, we must ask: How will the Catholic Church react? How will the world respond? Where will the cathedral’s parishioners celebrate Easter Mass on Sunday? Where will people go to congregate now?

Seeing Notre-Dame on fire Monday evening – even from across the Atlantic Ocean while watching via CNN International and on MSNBC – witnessing the middle spire topple over from the fire – brought sadness and tears to my eyes. I never thought I would see something this horrifying in my lifetime.

I watched in horror and felt helpless, then couldn’t turn the TV set off. I’m sure I was not alone. This has been a day of emotional sadness – to see an architectural icon go up in flames.

The television images and the up-to-the-minute internet graphics being transmitted by the BBC, The New York Times and NPR, among many, were haunting and horrible – heartbreaking to say the least  – but very real. There wasn’t anything remotely “fake news” about this spectacular and staggering tragedy.

The Notre-Dame cathedral and its common history reminds us there is still an appreciable beauty in a world that lately has been rearing its ugly and intolerant head. Sadly, tonight, the Parisian sky is filled with smoldering fire and smoke. Life in Paris has come to a halt while the first responders try courageously in the coming hours to put out the colossal fire. We hope they are successful in containing the damage. The whole world will be watching, hoping, praying.

“We will rebuild Notre-Dame,” said French President Emmanuel Macron tonight from Paris, “because the French want it.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama took to social media to share his thoughts with the people of France. He tweeted: “Notre Dame is one of the world’s great treasures, and we’re thinking of the people of France in your time of grief. It’s in our nature to mourn when we see history lost – but it’s also in our nature to rebuild for tomorrow, as strong as we can.”

My thoughts and prayers – and solace – go out to the people of Paris, to France, and to anyone in the world affected by this unfortunate Holy Week tragedy.

God bless us all and please help us understand this unprecedented catastrophe we are witnessing in real time.

A year of being Pope Francis

Pope Francis / "A man who laughs, cries, sleeps soundly and
has friends like everyone else. Just a normal person."

We're a year into the Pope Francis era. It's been filled with much hero-worship and adulation. Francis has graced the cover of Rolling Stone and been named Time magazine's Person of the Year. He's greeted by adoring fans wherever he goes. Among American Catholics, the 77-year-old Argentinean pontiff, born Jorge Mario Bergolio, is enjoying greater popularity than Pope Benedict XVI did in February of last year, when he suddenly announced his resignation.

Pope Francis, often pictured smiling in his white cassock, has shown much energy and charisma in shaping a new tone around the Vatican. He's become more open in granting interviews to the mainstream media while also embracing social media as a viable means for spreading the message and values as the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. 

Pope Francis waves at adoring
crowd in St. Peter's Square.

Noted for his humility, his concern for the poor, and his commitment to dialogue as a means of building bridges to between people of all backgrounds, beliefs and faiths, Francis "has dramatically altered the style of the papacy, making a series of symbolic choices that have solidified his persona as a plain-living, down-to-earth and genial head of the Catholic church," the London-based Guardian wrote earlier this month.

Now, a new poll out just in time for Lent reveals that a broad majority of American Catholics say Pope Francis represents not only a major change in direction for the church, but a change for the better. And yet, the poll conducted last month by the Pew Research Center suggests "his popularity has not inspired more Americans to attend Mass, go to confession or identify as Catholic — a finding that suggests that so far, the much-vaunted 'Francis effect' is influencing attitudes, but not behavior," The New York Times reported last week.

The poll, conducted between Feb. 14-23, included 1,821 adults. There was a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all Americans, and six percentage points for the subgroup of 351 Catholics.

"Francis, who draws giddy teenagers to his Wednesday audiences and generates Twitter traffic with every public remark, has clearly invigorated the church," The New York Times wrote. "But the poll finds that Francis has raised expectations of significant change, even though he has alluded that he may not alter the church’s positions on thorny doctrinal issues."

Among the poll's findings: Almost six in 10 American Catholics said they expected the church "would definitely or probably lift its prohibition on birth control by the year 2050, while half said the church would allow priests to marry." Also, four in 10 said they thought the church would ordain women as priests, and "more than two-thirds said it would recognize same-sex marriages by 2050." Further, "large majorities of American Catholics said they wanted the church to change on the first three matters, and half wanted the church to recognize same-sex marriages."

Pope Francis / A mixture of
homespun personality and
compassion.

As he reaches the first anniversary of his papacy this week, on March 13, among the priority issues that Pope Francis has faced during his first year include: addressing a clergy sex-abuse scandal, spreading the Catholic faith, standing for traditional moral values, addressing the needs and concerns of the poor, and overhauling the Vatican bureaucracy. He's tackling all the important issues of the day with a mixture of homespun personality and compassion. Seventy-one percent of those polled believe that Pope Francis represented a "major change in direction."

Finally, while the papal vestments include the wearing of a cape, the pontiff said he shouldn't be called a Superman. "To paint the Pope as a sort of Superman, a kind of star, seems offensive to me," Francis told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. "The Pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps soundly and has friends like everyone else. A normal person."

• • •

Note: To learn more about the first year of Pope Francis, I encourage you to read John Cornwell's excellent feature in the March 7 issue of The Financial Times.

Photographs courtesy: CNN.com, Telegraph.co.uk, theguardian.com.