The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris will be conducting a worship service Saturday, the first since a catastrophic fire destroyed its roof and spire on April 15, the Monday of Holy Week.
The attendance will be necessarily limited for safety reasons, CNN reports.
The Notre Dame Foundation has received $17.7 million in donations as of June 12, with another $425 million pledged for the rebuilding effort. The archdiocese maintains that the money will be used to restore the damage, but also to carry out other duties of the church, such as receiving pilgrims and paying musicians.
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to restore the damaged structure within five years, though intense debate has surrounded the specifics. Modernist architects floated various plans for the church’s reconstruction, ranging from repurposing the roof as a greenhouse to a swimming pool. Macron himself called for “an inventive reconstruction” of the cathedral that would make it “more beautiful than before.”
The French Senate, however, passed a bill on May 27 that stipulates the cathedral must be restored to “its last known visual state.”
Authorities ruled out arson as a cause of the fire, though Ellen Fantini, the director of the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, told the Daily Caller in April that France has seen a 252% increase in vandalism against Christian sites since 2008. She warned that the skyrocketing figure has largely met with silence from French media and government.
