In the coming weeks, the world's gaze will turn to Paris as it hosts the 2024 Summer Olympics. So much of the ‘City of Lights’ will be on display. 

Speaking personally, the most stunning of these places has to be Notre Dame Cathedral. Who can forget the collective horror of April 2019 when fire threatened to engulf her? The whole world watched in dismay. Frantic crowds in the street, paralysed and filled with trepidation. 

However, she was saved and donations from all over the world, $895 million to date, funded the rebuild. How she is cherished. When the flames were licking at the feet of those spires, the only way I could deal with the sickness and despair I felt was to pen off a letter, thinking that the end was nigh.

Farewell, my beauty                                                                              

Who amongst us, heathen or Christian, does not mourn the loss of a very potent symbol of Paris, Notre Dame.

The stories she had to tell, that we were too busy to listen to.

The treasures she guarded, that we were too busy to look at. 

The ancient mysteries written in her stone, that we never bothered to examine.

Her eyes, a witness to almost a thousand years of the growth of the Western Civilisation.

The Masons who gave her birth.

The proud oaks of France that formed her mantle.

The Kings crowned and anointed in her nave.

The Martyrs burnt in her square.

Zealous knights marching off into doomed enterprises.

Sacred choirs transforming her congregation.

Novitiates taking vows in moments of religious reverie.

Treachery and transgressions abounding down the ages.

Revolutions, destruction, betrayals and malice.

It is with a joyous heart that I can announce she will be completely rebuilt back to her former grandeur by the end of August 2024. The rooster ever vigilant on her spire.

Thank you, the people of Paris and France.