Author Topic: Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris closed after anti-gay marriage activist commits suicide  (Read 1712 times)

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Offline mountaineer

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Notre Dame Cathedral closed after anti-gay marriage activist commits suicide
From POST WIRE SERVICES
Last Updated: 2:24 PM, May 21, 2013
 
An anti-gay marriage activist dramatically killed himself in Notre Dame Cathedral today, forcing the evacuation of the world-famous Paris landmark.

Right-wing historian Dominique Venner, 78, put a sealed letter on the main altar before shooting himself in the head.

It's the first suicide in decades at the landmark site, Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, the cathedral's rector, told The Associated Press.

"It's unfortunate, it's dramatic, it's shocking," Jacquin said.

Police locked down the French capital’s 850-year-old cathedral soon after the shooting at 4pm local time as some 1,500 visitors were cleared out. Hours before his death, Mr Venner used his blog to attack a new law allowing same-sex marriage in France, writing: "New spectacular and symbolic actions are needed to wake up the sleep walkers and shake the anaesthetised consciousness.

Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, tweeted: "Our respect to Dominique Venner whose last gesture, highly political, was trying to awaken the people of France."

It's highly unusual for the cathedral, visited by some 13 million people from around the world every year, to be evacuated.

Police, the Paris prosecutor and church employees gathered inside the cathedral, while puzzled tourists crowded outside on the island in the Seine River that has been home to the cathedral since the 12th century.

School groups lined up in hopes of entering the cathedral Tuesday evening, when it was expected to reopen for an evening service that church officials said would include a prayer for the man who committed suicide and other struggling souls.

Tuesday's death comes less than a week after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic school in the French capital.

Jacquin said a few people had committed suicide by jumping from Notre Dame's twin towers, but he had no knowledge of anyone ever committing suicide on the altar. The Eiffel Tower occasionally shuts down because of suicides or attempts to jump off its ledges.

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Oceander

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You have got to be kidding me.  You attack one cardinal sin by committing another cardinal sin?

Offline mountaineer

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It was an irrational and very strange "statement."
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Offline Cincinnatus

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Not to be outdone:

A member of the militant feminist group Femen, known for its provocative topless protests, on Wednesday staged a mock suicide in Notre Dame cathedral in the French capital, less than 24 hours after a far-right historian killed himself there in front of visitors and church-goers.

Posing with a pistol in her mouth the woman, who had "May fascism rest in hell" written in black letters across her naked torso, was detained by security guards. She was then arrested by police outside the cathedral and taken to the nearby police station.

Femen claimed responsibility for the protest on its Facebook page writing: "Femen appealed for the death of facism at the exact same place extreme-right activist Dominique Venner committed suicide yesterday afternoon. Our activist was arrested by the police."

Inna Schevchenko, leader of the Femen movement, told journalists the protester was a French woman named Marguerite. "It is a message addressed to all those who support facism and those who have expressed sympathy for the extreme-right militant who killed himself in Notre Dame – namely Marine Le Pen."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/femen-mock-suicide-notre-dame
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