Notre-Dame of France and Cardinal Verdier's Wish (II)

Upon the demolition of the Pontifical-Pavilion-turned-Marian-Pavilion in early November 1938, Cardinal Vernier, Archbishop of Paris, expressed the wish that the luminous statue "Notre-Dame of France" not fall into oblivion but be erected on a hill in the Paris vicinity--as the counterpart of the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Montmartre. The Cardinal launched a subscription campaign, but the breakout of the war in 1939 followed by his own death in 1940, cut this project short. Fifty years later, at the term of an amazing and providential adventure, Edmond Fricoteaux (French lawyer and founder of the Confraternity Notre-Dame of France, +2007) managed to have the statue installed at Baillet-en-France, 11 miles north of Paris on a main highway. 52,000 people, 25,000 subscribers, 7 bishops, the Nuncio and Cardinal Jean Marie Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, gathered there for the blessing of the statue on October 15, 1988. This event took place almost 50 years to the day after Cardinal Verdier's wish.