The Oct. 4 event, organized under the global “First Saturdays of Fatima Jubilee 2025” initiative, draws pilgrims to Notre Dame Cathedral for the Marian devotion that emphasizes reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Newsroom (03/10/2025, Gaudium Press )In a poignant return to spiritual life after years of rebirth from ashes, Notre-Dame Cathedral will host its first First Saturday devotion this weekend, marking a sacred milestone just weeks after the reopening of its iconic towers.
The Oct. 4 event, organized under the global “First Saturdays of Fatima Jubilee 2025” initiative, draws pilgrims to the Parisian landmark for the Marian devotion that emphasizes reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This observance, rooted in a 1925 apparition to Sister Lúcia dos Santos in Pontevedra, Spain, comes exactly one month after the cathedral’s north and south towers flung open their doors to visitors on Sept. 19—six years to the day after the devastating 2019 blaze that gutted the spire and roof. The tower restoration, a crowning achievement of the €846 million ($950 million) reconstruction effort, restored the 13th-century structures to their medieval splendor, reinstalling 28 limestone statues of apostles and evangelists that had been removed for safekeeping before the fire. Crafted anew by French sculptors using original molds, these figures now perch once more on the rooftop, gazing over the Seine as if welcoming the faithful back to a fully revived sanctuary.
The First Saturdays devotion, which Our Lady requested to atone for sins against her Immaculate Heart—including denials of her perpetual virginity and Immaculate Conception—promises profound graces for participants: the Blessed Mother’s aid at the hour of death with all salvific necessities, and ultimate peace on earth through her heart’s triumph.
This year’s Jubilee, spanning shrines worldwide, seeks to revive awareness of the devotion amid global turmoil, fostering conversions that herald Mary’s promised victory. Organizers, including French coordinator Régis de Lassus, have urged its urgency, telling the National Catholic Register in August that the practice “has been forgotten and must be fulfilled as soon as possible because the spiritual and geopolitical situation in the world is catastrophic, and heaven has been waiting for almost a hundred years.”
The devotion entails four acts over five consecutive first Saturdays: sacramental confession (with reparation intent, allowable within eight days—or up to 20 during this Jubilee year); reception of Holy Communion; recitation of five Rosary decades; and 15 minutes of meditation on Rosary mysteries. As Venerable Lúcia recounted, the Child Jesus later affirmed in a 1926 vision that fervent prayer, even for five decades, pleases heaven more than tepid excess.
Prominent churchmen have championed the initiative. Cardinal Raymond Burke, in a June address, hailed the devotion as “a wonderful expression of [Mary’s] unfailing maternal love,” framing it not as rote ritual but a “way of life” of daily conversion to Christ’s Sacred Heart under Mary’s Sorrowful and Immaculate guidance—for God’s glory and souls’ salvation. He evoked Our Lady’s hopeful assurance: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph,” even as she warned of suffering from neglect.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, another vocal supporter, joins Burke in rallying the global faithful to embrace the practice this Jubilee year and beyond, amid Notre-Dame’s resurgence as a beacon of resilience.
Since the cathedral’s December 2024 nave reopening drew record crowds—29,000 daily visitors, surpassing pre-fire levels—the site has brimmed with renewed fervor, from surging confessions to tourists encountering grace amid Gothic grandeur. With the towers now accessible via a revamped spiral staircase tour, the full silhouette of Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century vision stands restored, symbolizing not just architectural triumph but spiritual renewal.
As Paris’s faithful ascend those ancient steps this weekend, they step into a devotion that bridges a century of heavenly pleas with a cathedral risen from ruin— a quiet revolution in stone and prayer, pointing toward the peace Our Lady foretold.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from NC Register
Related Images:
