PARIS: Wearing hard hats and protective suits, the choir of Notre Dame Cathedral sang inside the medieval Paris landmark for the first time since last year’s devastating fire for a special Christmas Eve concert.
Accompanied by an acclaimed violinist, a rented organ and a soprano soloist, 20 singers performed beneath the cathedral’s stained-glass windows amid the darkened church, which is transitioning from being a precarious hazardous clean-up operation to becoming a massive reconstruction site.
The singers stood socially distanced to be able to take off their masks — which is required indoors in France to stem the spread of the virus — and sing.
The concert was recorded Saturday and will be broadcast Thursday night. The public was not allowed and isn’t expected to see the insides of Notre Dame until at least 2024.
The diocese called it a “highly symbolic concert ... marked with emotion and hope,” and a celebration of a “musical heritage that dates to the Middle Ages.”
The archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Michel Aupetit, will hold Thursday’s Christmas Eve services in Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois Church across from the Louvre Museum instead of Notre Dame.
The Notre Dame choir used to give 60 concerts a year inside the cathedral but has been itinerant ever since, moving among other Paris churches.
The April 2019 fire consumed the cathedral’s lead roof and destroyed its spire, and only earlier this month did workers finally stabilize the site enough to begin rebuilding.
Christmas Eve concert held in Paris’ fire-wrecked Notre Dame
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Christmas Eve concert held in Paris’ fire-wrecked Notre Dame
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
