Notre Dame of Jerusalem – now restored as a tres chic pilgrim guesthouse (photos Gil Zohar) by Gil Zohar, Ask a Jerusalemite about Notre Dame and he’ll likely regale you about the last time he jetted off to Paris and toured its medieval cathedral. Which is a shame. Notre Dame here, more correctly called the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, is also a storied place of worship worthy of a visit.
Father Eamon Kelly, the Irish-born cleric and bon vivant who serves as the center’s vice chargé.
Moreover it’s an elegant pilgrim guesthouse that has welcomed Pope Benedict XVI, offers divine cuisine in four elegant eateries – and the tram fare at NIS 6.60 (get off at City Hall station and walk to 3 Paratroopers Road) is a lot cheaper than a flight from Ben Gurion to Charles de Gaulle. While the roof terrace offers a spectacular view of Jerusalem, alas there are no hunchbacks. Or gargoyles.
Father Juan María Solana of Pueblo, Mexico has directed Notre Dame since 2004
Notre Dame – meaning “Our Lady” in French referring to Mary the mother of Jesus – has a complex history reflecting the aspirations and conflicts that have shaped Jerusalem over the last century and half, explains Father Eamon Kelly, the Irish-born cleric and bon vivant who serves as the center’s vice chargé.
In the latter half of the19th century the European powers began sending missionaries, pilgrims, educators, doctors, explorers and archaeologists to the Holy Land as part of la mission civilisatrice – a colonial campaign in which the Great Powers jockeyed to supplant the ailing Ottoman Empire as the imperial suzerain.
With annual contingents as large as 10,000 Russian Orthodox serfs newly-released from bondage flocking to the Russian Compound just off Jaffa Road, it became inevitable that the Czar’s rival France construct a major pilgrimage center.
Sister Aurelia Narag works with Filipino migrant workers facing deportation.
In 1874 Baron Marie Paul Amedee de Piellat visited Jerusalem and the hospital in the Old City established in 1851 by France’s Sisters of Saint Joseph. Appalled by the clinic’s unsanitary conditions, in 1881 he established a modern facility outside the walls – which continues to function today as the 50-bed Hospice St. Louis for the terminally ill.
The following year, Baron de Piellat returned to the Holy City. This time he led le Grand Caravan de Mille, a pilgrimage of 1,000 rich French Catholics organized by the Augustinian Fathers of the Assumption. It was the first-ever penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land in modern times on such a grand scale. Disembarking at Jaffa, the pilgrims lugged an enormous wooden cross up to Jerusalem. But the Holy City was ill-equipped to shelter so many pilgrims – they encamped on a plot owned by le Compte next to the newly-built St. Louis des Français Hospital – on the very site Godfrey de Bouillon and his Crusader chevaliers had beseiged Jerusalem in 1099.
Staying in tents, the wealthy French pilgrims were irked to witness Russian peasants sleeping in real beds with a roof over their heads in the nearby Russian Compound. Sacre bleu!
Returning to France, the pilgrims launched a national fundraising appeal to erect an enormous monastery and guesthouse. In 1884 construction began according to a neo-Baroque plan by Abbé Brisacier of Tours. In 1886, Mgr. Poyet of Lyons, the Vicar General of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, proposed naming the then rising edifice Notre Dame de France. Indeed Notre Dame – built to house 1,600 pilgrims in its 410 rooms – became a symbol of French prestige in the Middle East. Not coincidentally, the French center obscured the view of the Old City from the Russian Compound.
The first pilgrims arrived in 1888, and the following year the Turks breached the Old City ramparts to create the New Gate accommodating the throngs of pilgrims flocking to the Christian Quarter. By 1904, after two decades of ongoing construction, Notre Dame was crowned with an enormous replica of Our Lady of Salvation in Puy-en-Velay placed between the pilgrim center’s twin towers.
The original iron statue was cast from 213 melted down Czarist cannons captured in the 1854-1855 siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War. But unlike sculptor Jean-Marie Bonnassieux’s original where the Virgin Mary is embracing infant Jesus in her arms, the copy created for Jerusalem was altered so Mary has her son resting on her shoulder. The extra height – raising the statue above the dome of the Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral – was meant as the Quai d’Orsay’s snub of the Kremlin.
Until 1947 the fathers of the Assumptionist order continued operating Notre Dame, serving as spiritual guides for Francophone pilgrims visiting Jerusalem’s holy places. But with the outbreak of Israel’s War of Independence, Notre Dame’s front line location and massive stone walls made it a strategic bastion.
The building was heavily damaged during the conflict, and its bomb-damaged south wing facing the Old City became uninhabitable. The Israel Defense Force established a heavily fortified post in the ruins facing the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s Arab Legion positions on the Old City walls. The former street in the middle became a no-man’s land of barbwire and minefields.
Following the 1948 division of Jerusalem, with far fewer pilgrims in need of lodgings and with the prohibitive cost of restoring the ruined building, the Assumptionist fathers sold their damaged property to the Hebrew University – which had lost use of its Mount Scopus campus as a result of the war. Two decades later following the reunification of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, at the personal request of Pope Paul VI to Prime Minister Golda Meir, HU turned ownership over to the Vatican in exchange for enough money to build the student dormitories known as shikunei ha-’elef. Since the center was no longer under French control, Notre Dame de France was rechristened Notre Dame de Jerusalem.
On November 26, 2004 Pope John Paul II entrusted the center to the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ. Fr. Juan María Solana of Puebla, Mexico was assigned as the chargé. Besides directing the ongoing renovation of the building to a luxurious standard while preserving its original character, Fr. Solana and his adjutant Fr. Kelly, who arrived in 2007, have endeavored to turn the center into a venue for interfaith dialog.
Fr. Kelly calls Notre Dame “a place of encounter,” noting that in recent weeks guests have included Baptists, Presbyterians, Muslim women from Jaffa, and Jews stopping by on the Sabbath. “It’s an incredible mix,” he adds. “A special place of meeting.”
Not all those visiting Notre Dame are pilgrims or tourists. Sister Aurelia Narag, originally from Quezon City, Philippines, explains “I work with Filipino migrant workers.” Some 100 members of her community attend English-language mass every Saturday night and Sunday morning at the center’s Our Lady of Peace chapel. Notre Dame has become a refuge for foreign workers facing deportation, she notes.
The chapel’s 200-year-old organ is one of the finest in Israel, Fr. Kelly adds. It was salvaged from a closed down Methodist church in northern England by a German antique organ enthusiast who had it restored by experts near Cologne, and donated to Notre Dame in 2011. The chapel’s tabernacle containing the hosts (holy wafers) was a gift from Pope Benedict XVI during his 2009 visit. Masses in English are held daily at 6:30 p.m. As well, the chapel is sometimes used for concerts and organ recitals.
Also worthy of a visit is the permanent exhibit “Who is the Man of the Shroud?” – a high-tech display about the Shroud of Turin that raises intriguing questions about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
While Notre Dame has a Papal Suite now being renovated by Nazareth architect Ranin Nakhleh-Khoury, under diplomatic protocol the Pontiff resides with the Papal Nuncio during official visits to Israel.
Amoury Lecomte, the manager of the Roof Top terrace
But he dines at Notre Dame – and the food in its four eateries is infallibly worthy of his grace. La Rôtisserie, the charmingly intimate 80-seat restaurant, is Notre Dame’s flagship gourmet eatery. Chef Rodrigo Gonzales-Elias arrived three years ago from Spain after serving as head chef at Madrid’s legendary Real Café Bernabeu. Under his tutelage, La Rôtisserie has developed a cuisine that mixes the polyglot flavors of Cuba, Spain and France with a dash of the Levant.
Amoury Lecomte, the manager of the Roof Top terrace, is equally proud of his establishment – which arguably boasts the finest panorama in the city from which to savor a glass of merlot or chablis. His wine cellar is stocked with 62 vintages and six champagnes, as well as 40 kinds of cheese.
“I worked hard on this,” he says of his bar, which opened in March 2011, and offers 56 seats inside and 120 on the terrace – which opened April 1 on Palm Sunday. The terrace, a secluded and peaceful oasis with its non pareil view of the Old City, is a popular spot for coffee, business meetings and tourists resting their tired feet.
Trained as a lawyer in his native Besançon, France, Lecomte put himself through university by working as a bartender and waiter only to discover that he found the hospitality industry more rewarding than law. Reservations are recommended, he suggests.
Notre Dame’s Cafeteria is open daily for breakfast from 9 to 11 a.m. The 250-seat Dining Room with its buffet lunch attracts some 200 tourists daily, says Husam Musleh, the Cornell University culinary school-trained catering manager.
“The best one so far,” says Marcello Bobba of Milan, Italy of the lunch he is enjoying after a morning spent touring in the Old City during a week-long tour of Israel. “Delicioso!,” concurs Laura Mocchetto of Trecate, Italy.
“Pilgrims need to eat well and sleep well,” emphasizes Fr. Kelly of his prestigious hostelry.
Situated between east and west, and the Old City and New City, the restored Notre Dame has become a “huge treasure. Obviously for believers even more so,” says Fr. Solana. Come experience its charm, he beckons.
“Notre Dame is a place people can meet without prejudice.”
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Gil Zohar is a journalist and licensed tour guide who writes extensively about Israel and the Middle East. He can be reached at http://www.gilzohar.ca/ or at GilZohar@rogers.com
