by Father Michael Perry
I am the most blessed priest in the world!
Ordained in 1971, I served in parishes in the diocese and as chaplain at the Pratt Institute for more than 20 years. During those years, I spent summers in Paris as the English-speaking priest at the Notre Dame Cathedral. I did that until COVID-19 and the fire.
By invitation of the French president and the rector of the most famous cathedral in the world, I was there when Notre Dame Cathedral celebrated its inaugural Mass on Dec. 8, a day after its reopening ceremony.
It was the first time in five years its doors were opened to the masses and the organ was played since the devastating fire in 2019, all to the pealing of the great bells and the prayers and cheers of people throughout the world. Maybe all this helps to explain why I feel so blessed.
During my summers at Notre Dame, I was on the altar for the funerals of Jacques Cousteau, Yves Congar, and François Mitterand. I also lived through a couple of terrorist attacks in Paris, one of them in the St-Michel Metro station. Never a dull moment. I also served with priests who were forced to have several identities during the Nazi occupation, the remarkable Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, and a worker-priest who worked for years as a laborer in a steel mill in Japan.
I was also a regular in the cafe next to Notre Dame. When the cafe got too busy, I would go into the kitchen and help myself. One of the ministries I served in France was celebrating the Eucharist with religious sisters whose convent was built into the prison where Marie Antoinette was before she was killed. It’s just a short walk from Notre Dame. It was also where pick-pocketers were brought, of whom I got to know a lot from their antics outside of the Cathedral and when they called to me from their holding cells on my way to the sisters. They got in for free. I had to pass through three checkpoints with 18th-century iron doors!
I now live in the Bishop Mugavero Residence at Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, on the other side of St Anastasia parish and the town where I grew up. So I ask you, is there any doubt about why I consider myself so blessed? Who’s got it better than me?
Father Michael Perry, a retired priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn, is pastor-emeritus at Our Lady of Refuge, Flatbush.
