Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.
Photo Credit: Sacha Fernandez via Flickr.
Illustration: CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY
Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris.
Photo Credit: Notre Dame | © Zuffe / WikiCommons
Illustration: THE CULTURE TRIP
Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, burns on 15 April 2019.
Photo Credit: Vanessa Pena/AP.
Illustration: THE WASHINGTON POST
Réjouis Toi, Marie.
(Rejoice, Mary).
Opéra d'images de Jean-Michel Mahenc.
Available on YouTube at
The following Text is taken from, and can be read in full at,THE WASHINGTON POST
Columnist.
23 April 2019.
BORDEAUX, France — This Easter weekend [2019], France was still reeling from the burning of the 800-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Its destruction is an apt metaphor for the devastation of Christianity across Europe — and a warning for us in The United States.
At Notre Dame’s much younger sister Church in Bordeaux (construction began in 1684), Easter Mass was well attended. But, in his Sermon, the Priest noted that the Church now has only two Sunday Masses; he could remember when there were seven.
And, for the first time in fifteen years, there was not one new Priest ordained in the Diocese. Bordeaux, he said, was lucky; some French Dioceses have not seen any Ordinations in twenty years.
France was once one of the most Catholic Countries in Europe. Today, while sixty-four per cent of French people still identify as Christian, only five per cent attend Church regularly and just one in ten Pray daily.
The younger generation is even less attached to The Faith of their fathers. According to a Study by The Benedict XVI Center for Religion and Society, only twenty-six per cent of French young adults consider themselves Christians, and sixty-five per cent say they never Pray.
The same sad story is playing out across the rest of Europe. The Study found only three Countries — Poland, Portugal, and Ireland — where more than one in ten young people said they attend a Religious Service weekly.
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