The televised address at 8:00 pm will concern Monday’s fire at the cathedral which caused serious damage to the 850-year-old landmark, the presidency said, without giving further details.
Macron would make his address on social issues “at the right moment… as there needs to be a time of contemplation and have the necessary responsibility at a time of great national emotion,” a presidential official said. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted a picture during the evening of candlestick holders and dozens of other artefacts in safekeeping at a room at the town hall.The steeple and spire of the landmark Notre-Dame Cathedral collapses as the cathedral is engulfed in flames in central Paris.The Holy Crown of Thorns, believed by Catholics to have been worn by Jesus Christ at his crucifixion so Roman soldiers could mock him, was spirited out of the building and is being kept safe at Paris town hall.
There were three holy items in the spire that collapsed in flames on Monday: a fragment of the Crown of Thorns and relics from Saint Denis and Saint Genevieve, two of the city’s most cherished saints.Of the cathedral’s three organs, the most impressive is the Great Organ with five keyboards, 109 stops and close to 8,000 pipes.
The instrument has been preserved but has been partly covered in rubble, dust and water, said Lefebvre who has been playing for 35 years at the cathedral. A mid-14th-century statue of the Virgin with Child, placed in the sanctuary, is the most famous of the 37 images of the Virgin Mary contained in the cathedral.