Miss Kelly

Worshipping in Paris - Beyond Notre Dame and Montmatre

The NY Times published a delightful article about the many amazing churches, cathedrals and chapels in Paris.  There are countless artisitic treasures to be had throughout Paris, without the crowds of Notre Dame and Sacre Couer at Montmatre. 

"Paris ordinarily defines itself to visitors as a city of museums, monuments, neighborhoods and shopping-and-eating opportunities. But there is another way into the history, culture and daily fabric of this city's life, a voyage of discovery into a world overlooked even by Parisians themselves: its nearly 100 churches."

"Seeing Paris through its churches — its 'vast symphonies of stone,' to paraphrase one of Victor Hugo's descriptions of his beloved Notre Dame — is to be thunderstruck. The surprises range from the hallucinatory (the intricately carved, lofted arch-screen of the 16th-century St.-Étienne-du-Mont Church (photo above) next to the Panthéon) to the culinary (the basement stone crypt of the 17th-century Polish church Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption that serves as a restaurant offering pickled herring and pork schnitzel."

The article has a mini-lesson in what happened to the Catholic church in France following the French revolution:

Savage Killing in France Makes the News

It took about a month for this apalling story to reach the mainstream media (the Boston Globe in my neck of the woods), but it's here now.  A young Jewish man named Ilan Halimi was lured on January 20 by a young woman, held captive in a housing project in Bagneux, and cruelly tortured for several weeks.  His captors tried to extort money from his family, who were unable to pay.  His naked, handcuffed body, scarred with cigarette burns and stab wounds, was dumped in a vacant lot on February 13.  He was found by a passer-by, but died on the way to the hospital.  The Globe's article focuses on the rise of anti-Semitism among Arab and African imigrants in France, but leaves out the gory details of Halimi's death.  More coverage on this story are provided here and here and here. 

May his soul rest in peace.