Starting today, Notre Dame opens the Crown of Thorns for public veneration every Friday. A historic step for one of Christianity’s most sacred relics.
Newsroom (05/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) Notre Dame Cathedral announced that the Crown of Thorns, widely revered as the very crown placed on Jesus Christ during His Passion, will now be exposed for public veneration every Friday from 3:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., beginning today. Previously, the relic was accessible only on the first Friday of each month, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The decision significantly widens access to one of the Church’s most treasured Passion relics, alongside a fragment of the True Cross and one of the Holy Nails, all preserved in the cathedral’s axial chapel treasury.
For more than sixteen centuries, these instruments of Christ’s suffering have drawn pilgrims to Paris. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John recount how Roman soldiers mocked the condemned Jesus by pressing a crown woven from thorns onto His head on the night leading into Good Friday.
Tradition holds that Saint Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, discovered the Crown in Jerusalem in the fourth century. The relic was later transferred to Constantinople and, in 1238, acquired by King Louis IX from the cash-strapped Latin Emperor Baldwin II. On August 19, 1239, Saint Louis personally welcomed the Crown in a solemn procession through Paris, later commissioning the Sainte-Chapelle as its permanent home—a jewel of Rayonnant Gothic architecture.
Though the original reliquaries were destroyed during the French Revolution, the Crown itself survived. In 1806, Napoleon returned the relic and accompanying Passion instruments to the Archbishop of Paris, and they have remained at Notre Dame ever since—miraculously spared again during the 2019 cathedral fire.
The Crown today consists of a circular braid of rushes, approximately 21 centimeters in diameter, bound with gold thread. The actual thorns were gradually removed and distributed as gifts by Byzantine emperors and French kings over the centuries. Since 1896, the rush circlet has been encased in a protective glass-and-gold tube set within an ornate neo-Gothic reliquary. The reliquary, commissioned by the cathedral chapter, features a rock-crystal crown resting on nine chimeras, surrounded by filigree, fleurs-de-lis, and precious stones. Figures of Saint Helena bearing the Cross and Saint Louis presenting the Crown flank the central relic, while the Twelve Apostles stand beneath delicate canopies.
With the new schedule, the faithful may now venerate the Crown of Thorns:
- Every first Friday of the month, 3:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. (unchanged)
- Every Friday, 3:00 p.m.–6:30 p.m., beginning December 5, 2025
Cathedral authorities describe the expanded hours as a fresh invitation for prayer and contemplation of the Paschal mystery in the newly restored Notre Dame, which reopened to the public just one year ago after the devastating 2019 blaze.
For countless believers, the extended access marks not only a practical change but a quiet triumph: one of Christianity’s most ancient and emotionally charged relics is now more available than at any time in recent history.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from ACI Prensa
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