During the Paris Olympic Games, track and field champions rang the bronze bell located close to the finish line at Saint-Denis’ Stade de France.
In December, that same bell will ring in the newly reopened Notre Dame Cathedral during the most sacred part of the Mass.
“We were contacted a few months ago by the Paris Organising Committee, to see if we would be interested in this bell for Notre Dame,” said the cathedral’s rector-archpriest, Father Olivier Ribadeau Dumas.
“And we accepted this proposal.” The bell, weighing 1,103 lbs., was made for the occasion of the Olympic Games by the Cornille Havard foundry, dubbed “the last bell makers of France,” located in Normandy at Villedieu-les-Poêles, a small French commune, some 24 miles northeast of famous Mont Saint-Michel.
The foundry produces bells for France’s largest churches and cathedrals. In 2013, it produced nine new bells for Notre Dame, to mark the cathedral’s 850th anniversary.
Installed in Notre Dame’s north tower, their role was to ring for the cathedral’s daily services. The same company restored eight of these nine bells, after they had been damaged during the fire of 15 April 2019.
The Olympic bell will join two other bells inside the cathedral not far from the organ. The three bells will ring together during Mass at the moment of the consecration.