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'There's hope' Columbia-based French national says after Notre Dame fire

Reaction continues to Monday's destructive fire at Notre Dame in Paris, France

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Reaction continues to pour in across the nation over the fire-caused destruction at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

The fire destroyed the Cathedral’s roof on Monday, but officials said many of the Cathedral’s relics and artwork were saved.

“It was devastating, it was devastating, the Cathedral de Notre Dame for us, it's a home place,” said Catherine Combier-Donovan, mixing in French and English.

Combier-Donovan was born in France and has lived in the United States since the age of six. Monday night, she watched with the world on television as Notre Dame burned.

“I talked to my father, who's 97, and he just cried, on the phone, he just cried. It touched him so deeply, and I'm sure that all my family in France it's the same,” Donovan continued.

She still has French citizenship, went home every summer as a child, and is now a practicing Catholic at St. John Neumann Church in Columbia.

“For Notre Dame to be hit like this, it hits your history but also your heart and your faith. So, for us as Catholics and the French, and I have French family that's not very practicing, and they're devastated,” she said.

But, Combier-Donovan said there's hope since many of the Church's relics and historic artifacts were saved.

“Well these are part of the treasures of France and the treasures of the Church in France. So, for them to have been saved is remarkable and if the church is rebuilt, the cathedral rebuilt, they can be brought back. They'll be kept safely at the Louvre for a while, but it has enormous meaning,” Donovan said, mixing French and English once again.

“There's hope, and during this Holy Week we aim towards the Resurrection and so we just have great hope and faith,” she finished.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he wants the Cathedral rebuilt in five years. Since Monday night, donors have given hundreds of millions of Euros to rebuild the UNESCO site.

Kay Edwards, a history professor at the University of South Carolina said the Cathedral is an inflection point of religious, cultural, and French history.

Edwards specializes in European church and human history from the mid-14th to 17th centuries.

“I would argue because of the way it symbolizes both durability in the midst of change, and actually even durability while changing. As I said, it's been a witness to 850 years of human history, it has evolved, human history has evolved, but it stayed there. And to me, very visually a bridge between heaven and earth,” Edwards said in her office on Tuesday.

The Cathedral, once it was completed, also symbolized the height of Gothic-architecture, royal authority, and the power of the Christian god, according to Edwards.

For more than 850 years, it's operated as a beating cultural and spiritual heart for France and Western Europe, according to Edwards.

Not to mention, the square in front of the Cathedral, now famous for photographs, has been a witness to centuries of some of France’s most important historical moments, Edwards added.

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