Anyone who wants to visit the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was ravaged by fire in 2019, may in the future have to pay an entrance fee, according to a proposal from French Culture Minister Rachida Dati.

Dati believes that a ticket price of five euros could generate 75 million euros per year in maintenance costs for religious properties in the country.

“Nearly 4,000 protected religious buildings are in poor condition or even worse,” the minister said at a conference of France's bishops on Monday.

However, the church is giving the proposal a cold shoulder.

Churches and cathedrals have ”always been open to all,” Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort told the meeting, adding that a fee of this kind would be a ”betrayal of this vocation.”.

Notre Dame, which has been closed since the fire, is scheduled to reopen on December 7 after a five-year reconstruction that cost nearly 700 million euros.

Source: TT-DI.SE