Macron gutted intact stained glass to turn the cathedral into a diversity billboard.
France was promised Notre Dame would be rebuilt “identically” after the 2019 fire. Instead, the state is tearing out 19th‑century stained glass that survived the blaze so a trendy French painter from Los Angeles can install soft, modern Pentecost scenes for the global art crowd. Emmanuel Macron backed Claire Tabouret for the job and the culture machine fell in line, treating the country’s most famous church as a personal branding project.
Tabouret’s art is textbook global liberal imagery. Her designs show hazy, pastel crowds of “diverse” figures, no clear saints, no real doctrine, just the usual unity visuals that would fit in an EU lobby as easily as in a Gothic chapel. Friendly outlets gush that she will make Pentecost “inclusive” and “universal,” which in practice means stripping out Catholic meaning and replacing it with the same borderless story pushed everywhere else.
Heritage experts tried to block the swap. France’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission unanimously rejected the plan to remove the surviving windows, and traditional groups have taken the state to court, pointing out that the old glass is intact and belongs where it is. Well over a hundred thousand people signed petitions demanding the historic windows stay in place, but once the president’s office chose its artist, the bureaucracy shrugged and moved ahead.
This is how the ruling class handles what is left of Christian Europe. Notre Dame survived revolutions, wars, and fire, and now gets hollowed out by people who see a famous cathedral as just another surface for their slogans.