Notre Dame Cathedral is reborn in a darkened world

By almost any metric the restoration of Notre Dame has been a success, coming just five years after a fire swept across the masterpiece of Gothic architecture nearly destroying it. A host of global figures, including President-elect Donald Trump, are scheduled to pay homage to the church in a Saturday ceremony to inaugurate its reopening.

Notre Dame’s revival is nothing short of a miracle to many, a sign that cooperation across France and beyond to achieve a singular goal is still possible. Yet the gleaming cathedral also stands in contrast to the dark times that have enveloped Paris and the world. Wars are raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the U.S.-led international order that has prevailed since the end of World War II is at a turning point. Trump has fueled the anxieties of leaders across Europe by questioning Washington’s commitment to underpinning Europe’s security architecture without greater contributions from allies. He also wants to impose tariffs that would punish the continent’s economy.

Nowhere is the malaise more apparent than in France. Its economy has nearly stalled. Its public finances are in disarray. And this week the government collapsed in a parliamentary no-confidence vote for the first time since 1962.

The breakdown has cast a shadow over an event intended to mark the return to glory of not only Notre Dame but of the country as a whole. President Emmanuel Macron—the driving force behind the Cathedral’s swift recovery—has conceived of the inaugural ceremony as an elaborate victory lap, bookending a year that included the hosting of the Summer Olympics in Paris.

For Macron, rebuilding Notre Dame on time and on target was about affirming his vision of France as a nation capable of shedding its historical burdens and perennial sense of fatalism. Macron’s France is a startup nation of can-do strivers and the home of some of the world’s richest billionaires, including luxury titans who funneled hundreds of millions of euros into repairing the church. It is where some of the world’s most accomplished artisans and stonemasons still operate, allowing them to mobilize for a project of biblical proportions.

Notre Dame is “proof that we can do great things, we can do the impossible," Macron said during a recent address on national TV. “We must do the same for the nation."

Macron’s many opponents—from protesters on the streets to lawmakers in the National Assembly—see the return of Notre Dame differently. For them, the cathedral’s restoration belies deeper signs of decay across French society, particularly the widening gap between the wealthy and poor. Many French see Notre Dame rising from the ashes at a time when public services from hospitals to schools are in decline.

Notre Dame has long been held up as a mirror of the soul of France. In his 19th-century novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame," Victor Hugo wrote that the cathedral, with its gargoyle drains and flying buttresses, embodied freedom of expression in Medieval France as “thoughts written in stone."

In the years leading up to the fire, Notre Dame had fallen into a state of disrepair due to decades of neglect. Located on the Ile de la Cité, a small island in the middle of the Seine River, Notre Dame has for centuries been a center of civic and religious life.

Thousands of people gathered on the riverbanks on April 15, 2019, to watch in horror as the stone cathedral became a cauldron of fire. It is still unknown what caused the fire that ravaged the church’s centuries-old timber roofing, bringing down the towering Gothic spire. Investigators believe the conflagration began inside a massive scaffolding that had been erected around the spire as part of an earlier restoration project.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the most urgent task was to stabilize the church. The fallen spire and roof had been central to the cathedral’s structural integrity, counteracting the force of its heavy walls and buttresses, which were at risk of collapsing. Water used to douse the flames created fissures in the massive stones that arc above Notre Dame’s nave, and seeped into the joints and mortar, leading to crumbling.

The scaffolding where the fire started also threatened to collapse and take the cathedral down with it. The 350-ton metal structure, which had been built for previous restoration work, stood charred, twisted and shaky, where the spire used to be.

Giant wooden supports were installed to reinforce the north, west and south gables as well as the flying buttresses. A new scaffolding was built around the old one, to allow workers, known as squirrels, to rappel down and remove it piece by piece.

The removal of the scaffolding finally allowed for the restoration work to start as endless debates raged over how to do it.

Macron wanted an international architectural competition to come up with a new design for the spire. The plan sparked outrage among historians who said the cathedral should be rebuilt identically to its form before the fire. Ultimately, Macron’s plan was shot down by the country’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission.

But Macron didn’t give up on his idea to add a modern-day touch to Notre Dame. He organized this year another competition to select an artist to create new modern stained glass windows to replace those designed by 19th-century architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

The government has yet to announce the name of the winner but the plan has already been met with fierce opposition.

Julien Lacaze, the head of an association that defends France’s heritage, launched a petition against the new stained glass windows that has gathered more than 240,000 signatures.

“What do these stained glass windows celebrate? There’s nothing to celebrate," he added.

The fire, Lacaze said, could have been avoided had authorities invested earlier in a modern fire protection system. The restored cathedral has a remedy to that problem: Authorities have installed thermal cameras along with a system to douse any flames.

Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com