For years Notre-Dame cathedral was caught in a dispute between the city's a...
PARIS - For years Notre-Dame cathedral was caught in a dispute between the city’s archdiocese and the French state over who should pay for repairs to its crumbling gargoyles, collapsed balustrades and weather-eroded Gothic facades.
On Tuesday, hours after flames had toppled the cathedral’s once towering wood-framed spire and gutted the roof, French tycoons had already pledged hundreds of millions of euros for restoration, as had some of the country’s best-known companies.“It’s a shame,” said Philippe de Cuverville, general director for the Paris archdiocese in charge of economic affairs. “We tend to wait for things to become catastrophic before we take care of them. It’s just human nature.
The government of former President Francois Hollande agreed to contribute 4 million euros annually over a 10-year period, double the 2 million euros the diocese said it would raise. Francois-Henri Pinault of Kering Group, owners of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, offered 100 million euros. Soon after, his arch-rival Bernard Arnault of luxury group LVMH pledged double Pinault’s sum.
Jean-Michel Leniaud, head of the science council at the National Heritage Institute, said the blaze was the result of carelessness and neglect that stemmed in part from what he called a puerile conflict between the state, which officially owns Notre-Dame and is avowedly secular, and the Church.
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