Much as already been written, even hours after the devastating fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, about the “iconic status” of the building, its value to world heritage and the fact, noted by Pope Francis, that the building was “an architectural jewel of collective memory.” It took, however, the quiet but thoughtful Archbishop of Paris, a former medical doctor, Michel Aupetit, to ask, rhetorically, quite why the building was, and is, a “jewel.”
Interviewed on French television, Archbishop Aupetit, said simply that the magnificent basilica was built for one reason, not to be a “jewel,” not even to house the Crown of Thorns; Notre Dame existed for “un morceau de pain – for a piece of bread,” the bread, he said, Catholics believe is the “Body of Christ.”
