Part of a Series on Vincentian Heritage Places

Cathedral of Notre Dame

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Lenten Conferences at Notre Dame
Frederic Ozanam initiated the famed “Conferences of Notre Dame” which provided thousands with the inspired and enlightening sermons of Père Lacordaire. This was another expression of Ozanam’s life-commitment to work for the promotion of the Truth of the Church. The Lenten sermons were so popular that the Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, was packed to capacity with both Catholics and non-Catholics. The series became an annual event, which continues to the present day.

Holy Days at Notre Dame
Easter was always one of Frederic’s favorite holy days. As he wrote on Easter of 1842, “Today is too beautiful not to spend with my family. Even this morning at Notre Dame I was not alone…. It would be especially impossible to see anything more beautiful than the congregation: on leaving, the crowd streamed out of the three doors and covered the plaza. The great basilica with its black façade and majestic towers revealing the illuminated nave through its portal represented so to speak the sacred edifice of the faith whose mysteries are also imposing and grave outwardly but conceal an interior of infinite charity…. After Communion, which, given by two priests, took an hour, a magnificent Te Deum filled the vaults, and we broke up deeply moved.” On Christmas day in the same year, he and Amélie attended Notre Dame at nine o’clock in the morning.

Beatification
The Holy Father Saint John Paul II scheduled Frederic Ozanam’s beatification ceremony for August 22, 1997, at Notre Dame Cathedral. The beatification coincided with the Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth.

Source: Antoine Frédéric Ozanam by Raymond L. Sickinger, University of Notre Dame Press

Notre-Dame as it looked at the end of the 19th century

All Vincentian Places in this Series

Red = Vincent de Paul, Blue = Frederic Ozanam

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