Notre Dame donations slow to come from rich

French billionaires had boasted about plans to help

PARIS — The billionaire French donors who publicly proclaimed they would give hundreds of millions to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral have not yet paid a penny toward the restoration of the national monument, according to church and business officials.

Instead, it’s mainly American and French individuals, via Notre Dame charitable foundations, who are behind the first donations paying the bills and salaries for up to 150 workers employed by the cathedral since the April 15 fire that devastated its roof and caused its masterpiece spire to collapse. This month they are handing over the first private payment of $4 million for the cathedral’s reconstruction.

“The big donors haven’t paid. Not a cent,” said Andre Finot, senior press official at Notre Dame. “They want to know what exactly their money is being spent on and if they agree to it before they hand it over, and not just to pay employees’ salaries.”

Almost $1 billion was promised by some of France’s richest and most powerful families and companies, some of whom sought to outbid one another, in the hours and days after the inferno. It prompted criticism that the donations were as much about the vanity of the donors wishing to be immortalized in the edifice’s fabled stones than the preservation of France’s church heritage.

The reality on the ground at Notre Dame is that work has been continuing around the clock for weeks, and the cathedral has had to rely partly on the charity foundations to fund the first phase of reconstruction.

The Friends of Notre Dame de Paris was founded in 2017, and its president, Michel Picaud, estimates that 90 percent of the donations it has received have come from American donors.

“Americans are very generous toward Notre Dame, and the monument is very loved in America. Six out of our 11 board members are residents in the U.S.,” Picaud said.

While the billionaire donors delay signing their checks, the workers at the cathedral face the epic task of cleaning up the lead poisoning that has become an issue for the Parisian island on which Notre Dame is located.

An estimated 300 tons of lead that made up the cathedral’s roof melted or was released into the atmosphere during the fierce blaze, which sent out toxic dust.

Olivier de Challus, one of the cathedral’s chief guides and architecture experts, said one reason the rich French donors haven’t yet paid is that there are still so many uncertainties about the direction of the reconstruction work.

Karine Perret The Associated Press Priests attend a Mass on Saturday led by Archbishop Michel Aupetit at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.