Speaking on the first anniversary of the Notre Dame fire, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to do his best to ensure the cathedral's reconstruction is finished by his ambitious target date of 2024.
"I promised we would rebuild Notre Dame in five years," he said in a video sent out on Tuesday morning by Twitter. "We will do everything to meet this deadline. The site is on hold at the moment due to the health crisis, but it will restart as soon as possible."
He spoke just hours after, on Monday, he extended the virtual lockdown to curb the coronavirus outbreak until May 11.
The fire on 15 April 2019 destroyed the roof and transept spire of Notre Dame and almost brought down its western facade. Macron promptly pledged to quickly rebuild the monument that he called in his video "a symbol of the resilience of our people, of their capacity to overcome hardships and to recover".
Repair work was halted in mid-March when France imposed a tight lockdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The schedule had already been delayed last summer by additional security measures against possible lead poisoning on the site, and by strong winds last winter that held up the delicate removal of extensive scaffolding over the transept.
Officials say the medieval structure remains solid but the actual reconstruction cannot start until the lockdown is lifted and the scaffolding can be removed.
General Jean-Louis Georgelin, a former chief of defence staff overseeing the reconstruction, told Le Pelerin magazine that architects were now assessing the strength of the cathedral vault pierced by the roof's collapsing spire. That study will help determine how to reconstruct the ceiling.
No decision had yet been made about restoring the spire in its original style or opting for something else, he added.
Georgelin, who said his Catholic faith had factored into his selection to oversee the reconstruction, promised to do his best to assure a Te Deum service is held in Notre Dame on 16 April 2024.
"I’m not sure that the emotion that gripped the world after the fire would have been as strong if such a disaster had hit the Eiffel Tower. Notre Dame is the soul of France," he said.
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