President-elect Donald Trump will join first lady Jill Biden and Britain’s Prince William among other dignitaries at the December 7 reopening of the famed Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris after it was heavily damaged in a 2019 fire. Trump was serving his first term in office at the time.
“It is an honor to announce that I will be traveling to Paris, France, on Saturday to attend the re-opening of the magnificent and historic Notre Dame Cathedral, which has been fully restored after a devastating fire five years ago,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Trump said that French President Emmanuel Macron has “done a wonderful job” ensuring that the cathedral has been restored to “its full level of glory,” calling it a “very special day” for the world.
French president Emmanuel Macron speaks to a crowd gathered at Notre-Dame on November 29, 2024, ahead of its reopening. Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson/ POOL/ AFP via Getty Images.
Jill Biden is capping her last solo trip abroad as the wife of President Joe Biden with the visit to the cathedral after stops in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the Associated Press reported. In her travels, she expressed support for the U.S. military, education and research into cancer and women’s health.
And Kensington Palace said in a statement carried by the BBC that Prince William is traveling to France “at the request of His Majesty’s Government on behalf of the United Kingdom” as his role as a diplomat grows under his father’s reign. It was not immediately clear if Trump, Biden or Prince William had any meetings planned.
Presiding over the reopening service will be Laurent Ulrich, the Archbishop of Paris, according to the cathedral’s website. After a door-opening rite, visitors will experience a service that will include the awakening of the cathedral’s great organ, the chanting of the office of the mass, and a final blessing.
The fire, probably caused by an electrical short circuit or stray cigarette butt, spread rapidly on April 15, 2019, before consuming two-thirds of the cathedral’s lead roof and internal timber structure, which dated to when the majority of the construction took place, around 1260. The cathedral was completed in 1345.
The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris before the fire. Photo by Pascal Lemaitre.
The historic restoration over the last five years has seen the reconstruction of the damaged areas using the same traditional materials and many of the same methods as were used when it was first built. Macron has called it the “project of the century,” for which officials raised some €846 million (nearly $900 million) from 340,000 donors in 150 countries.
In the lead-up to the reopening, some voices in the Catholic Church in France expressed apprehension about how the ceremony would be conducted, and about the potential politicizing of the event by Macron.
Jill Biden, raised as a Presbyterian, is a practicing Catholic who has regularly attended Mass with her husband in Greenville, Delaware. But Trump, confirmed as a Presbyterian as a child, said in 2020 that he considers himself to be a nondenominational Christian. Prince William, as a British royal, was christened and confirmed as a member of the Church of England, headed by the monarchy since it split from Catholicism in 1534.