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In other times, perhaps he would not have even opened an email with the diocese's Easter program. Nor would he have noticed a link to be credited to a blessing of "the city of Paris with the Holy Sacrament" , from the Sacre Coeur basilica. But these are not normal times. Confined by the virus, old routines take on the status of an exception, and attending an old ritual becomes an unexpected gift .

With that emotion I climb a clean meter like I never saw it. I enter through the door through which a traveler descends so as not to touch the handle. Chatellet almost passed me, in darkness. Normally dozens of people get on and off this exchanger. Today, someone else and me. Maze of hallways, stairs, I hate this station. Silence, there are no traveling musicians . The platform of line 4 is under construction. Spectral. A couple at one end. Me in the other. Passengers are added. All lonely. We are distributed by the wagons. I hear a traveler cough and he changed his mind, I sit five meters away. Hardly anyone gets off at the Gare du Nord. About twenty passengers left at the Chateau Rouge stop, three white.

It is 11:30, it is a wonderful day and there is an open kebab. On the way to the top of the Montmartre hill, I passed alone with two children and a young man, mobile in hand , sitting on the step of the Muller bar. The only open store is a grocery store. I climb the seven flights of 21 steps and the two ends of 31 steps sweating . And happy. I'm clean, sure. No one with the coronavirus would pass this stress test. I have had to stop twice but I reach the esplanade with my tongue hanging out.

The Archbishop, already dressed for the ceremony, is explaining to the cameras what the Church celebrates on Maundy Thursday: "On this day, Jesus Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper." Monsignor Michel Aupetit has an unusual past. Grandson of anticlerical grandparents , although he accompanied his mother to mass (his father, a railroad man, did not go), he was never a boy scout, an altar boy or went to a religious school. He studied medicine and practiced until he was ordained a priest at age 44. In two decades he has traveled the entire ranks until in December 2017 Pope Francis appointed him Archbishop of Paris.

Since the Notre Dame cathedral fire, almost a year ago now, he moved religious services to Saint German l'Auxerrois, a neighboring church to the Louvre, oblivious to the crowds. The covid-19 has forced to suppress all the cults of France. The churches are open with a hundred separate chairs. All the Easter services will be held behind closed doors with a maximum of 20 faithful, but will be broadcast by Radio Notre Dame and the KTO channel (read cato, Catholic family apocope).

The Sacred Heart is closed by the epidemic. It had been years since he had gone up to Montmartre, where the Impressionists and Picasso lived and painted when he was poor . I reconcile with the place, empty of tourists who have covered with their loving padlocks all the railings of the place.

Montmartre, mount of mars, whose temple was on this hill that dominates the city. Montmartre, Mount of Martyrs because here Denis would have been beheaded, sent to Christianize this part of Gaul. Here there was an abbey in which, among others, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Ignatius of Loyola prayed .

After the defeat against the Prussians in 1870, two parents set out to build a temple by popular subscription. It opened in 1919, when the next conflict ended, the First World War. On the anniversary date, a solemn blessing is officiated.

The unique thing about this church is that for more than 130 years, before even finishing the works, the Holy Sacrament has always been exposed here. That is, the host in a custody of gold. Day and night, every day. Snow or thunder. In war and in peace.

That sacred jewel is what the archbishop has taken from the peristyle of the temple. Outside the gate, around twenty cameras, four reporters, and a dozen policemen who have asked for our credentials. Zero tension.

Half a dozen faithful, including a mother with a baby in her arms , kneel on the cobblestones. An 89-year-old woman tells me, without removing the mask that lives nearby and is here out of curiosity

It is 8 minutes to noon when Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo arrives. Jacket and black pants, mask on the face. She will be the only parishioner admitted to the peristyle. He was also in the PSG-Borussia match that was already held without an audience, at the dawn of the pandemic .

The 12 o'clock chimes sound when the chanting of the nuns who will remain in the darkness inside the temple is heard. The Archbishop is the only open face officiant. The other priests, with a mask. Everyone in white.

Aupetit reads a passage from the Letter to the Hebrews and prays for "the sick and all who suffer the consequences of the pandemic." He pleads: "Accord health to the sick , force medical personnel, comfort families and salvation to those who have found death."

Then, covered with a cape, he takes up custody, descends the stairs, slalom between the tripods of the cameras, and looking at the Paris skyline silently blesses the city. Before you have heard "Tantum ergo sacramentum ...", the last two stanzas of the 'Pange lingua'. Paris remains threatened by the pandemic. But blessed.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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