I’m no hero, says priest who saved relics
A PRIEST who risked his life to save priceless artefacts from the fire said yesterday: ‘I find it difficult to describe myself as a hero’.
Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade, was praised for his courage after he entered the burning cathedral with firefighters to retrieve centuries-old objects such as the Crown of Thorns, said to have been placed on Jesus’s head before his crucifixion.
But in his first interview since Monday’s blaze, he said he was uncomfortable with the public adulation. The 53-year-old added: ‘But if being a hero consists of fulfilling a mission with passion and self-denial then maybe I have been a little bit. To watch as the cathedral was devoured by the flames filled me with a deep sadness. I was both the priest and the firefighter when I entered the cathedral on Monday night.’