Notre Dame inferno: Hero priest braved flames to save treasures

Priest who braved bullets in the Bataclan attack braved flames to save the cathedral’s treasures.

Father Jean-Marc Fournier and the Crown of Thorns. Picture: Supplied.

The chaplain of Paris fire brigade, a French army unit, braved the scene of the fire at Notre Dame to save priceless religious relics.

Father Jean-Marc Fournier insisted on being allowed to enter the cathedral despite the danger, according to Philippe Goujon, the mayor of Paris’s 15th district.

Etienne Loraillere, a journalist at the Catholic television network KTO, said that the priest had helped to save the Crown of Thorns, which Christians believe was placed on the head of Jesus. The cathedral describes it as its “most precious and most venerated relic”.

Mr Loraillere said Father Fournier had also save the Blessed Sacrament, another of Notre Dame’s most important relics.

Le père Fournier, aumônier des @PompiersParis, est allé avec des pompiers dans la cathédrale #NotreDame pour sauver la couronne d’épines et le Saint-Sacrement... pic.twitter.com/4IoLVdoJZW

— Etienne Loraillère Ù† (@Eloraillere) April 15, 2019

His action came as fire and police officers formed a human chain to remove artefacts held in Notre Dame’s treasury. Many of the most significant items recovered were taken to Paris city council offices a few hundred metres from the cathedral for safe keeping.

It was not the first time that Father Fournier has won praise for his actions. In 2015 he entered the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed during an Islamist terrorist attack. The jihadists were still in the concert hall and bullets were flying when he went in to help evacuate the wounded.

On that day he had decided that “either you keep moving, or you’re dead”, he told Famille Chretienne, a Catholic website, four months after the shootings. Once the killing had ended, he prayed over the bodies.

Father Fournier said that the intervention had helped to create a bond between members of the rescue service team that evening. “It creates links that are sometimes stronger that those which exist between members of the same family.”

He added: “In the Bataclan there were piles of bodies … I prefer to remember those that were embraced by people who sacrificed themselves to try to save those whom they loved.”

Father Fournier, who is in his fifties, became an army chaplain in 2004 and has been sent on overseas missions, including to Afghanistan. He became chaplain of the fire brigade in 2011. He said he does “not know what a Catholic chaplain is for. But I notice that when he is not there, things go less well.”

The Times