The 14th-century statuee century takes place on Friday at Notre-Dame after a torchlit procession through the streets of Paris. For the diocese, this is the last major event before the cathedral reopens on December 7 and 8.
She is “a sign of consolation and hope”. for the faithful, the diocese said at a press conference on Wednesday. A survivor of the fire that ravaged Notre-Dame of Paris on April 15, 2019, the famous statue of the Virgin and Child will return to the cathedral late on Friday, November 15, in a torchlit procession through the streets of the capital. The procession will bring back the medieval statue that “the first to make its symbolic return to Notre-Dame”.explains Laurent Ulrich, Archbishop of Paris.
Found intact after the fire, the Virgin and Childoften referred to as the “Virgin of the Pillar”, had been moved to the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, which for five years hosted the cathedral’s liturgy. The faithful and Parisians will meet at 6 p.m. on the square in front of this church, located near the Louvre in central Paris. The torchlit procession will then take in Notre-Dame Cathedral, along the quays of the Île de la Cité.
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A replica used in the procession
At 7 p.m., the statue will be blessed by the Archbishop of Paris, followed by a vigil of praise and prayer, combining Magnificat, prayer and Gospel readings. This procession marks the “last major event before the cathedral reopens on December 7 and 8”.stresses the diocese. With this return, the famous statue will regain its place near the pillar in front of which the writer Paul Claudel converted on Christmas Day 1886. The sculpture depicts Mary holding the infant Jesus. The one used on the route, however, will be a replica: “it is not possible – to preserve the work, which has been weakened by the centuries – to do the procession with this statue, but we’ll be there to see it off in a truck, and then to set off for the square in front of Notre-Dame”.explained Stéphane-Paul Bentz, chaplain of Notre-Dame, on the Paris diocese website at the end of October.
“On the forecourt, we will be greeted by the Notre-Dame choir and the original statue, which we will be able to see because the doors of the truck and its crate will have been opened beforehand.”The truck will then pass through the palisades of the forecourt, he added. Ahead of the ceremony, a “novena” has been organized since November 7, with a replica of the statue touring several parishes, shrines and hospitals in the capital.
This sculpture, which dates from the mid-14the century chapel comes from the Saint-Aignan chapel, located in the former cloister of the canons on the Île de la Cité. In 1818, it was transferred to Notre-Dame, and in 1855 it was the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc who decided to move it to the south-east pillar of the cathedral’s transept.