Notre Dame Cathedral will not hold Christmas services for the first time in more than two centuries — thanks to blazes that ravaged the church last spring, officials said.
The Paris cathedral, which celebrated midnight Mass during both world wars — even amid the Nazi occupation of France — will skip services for the holiday this year for the first time since 1803, according to CNN.
“This is the first time since the French Revolution that there will be no midnight Mass,” cathedral rector Patrick Chauvet told The Associated Press.
The 855-year-old landmark is currently undergoing restoration after it was badly damaged in an April 15 fire that destroyed its roof and spire.
The service will relocate to another Gothic church called Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois just under a mile away, where a wooden liturgical platform has been constructed to resemble Notre Dame’s.
The church will also serve as a temporary home to Notre Dame’s “The Virgin of Paris” sculpture, which some have suggested gave the cathedral its name and was saved from the inferno earlier this year.
“We have the opportunity to celebrate the Mass outside the walls, so to speak… but with some indicators that Notre Dame is connected to us,” Chauvet said.
Prior to the fire, Notre Dame had managed to continue to hold services during the bloodshed of wartime.
Chauvet said there was a Christmas service during World War I “because the canons were there and the canons had to celebrate somewhere,” referring to the cathedral’s clergy.
During World War II, there was “no problem” despite the city being under Nazi occupation, he added.
The only known time the church was closed for the December holiday in the period after 1789, when anti-Catholic French revolutionaries took over the landmark, officials said.
With Post wires
