78-Year-Old Anti-Gay Marriage Activist Shoots Himself In The Head Inside Notre Dame Cathedral

An anti-gay marriage activist dramatically killed himself in Notre Dame Cathedral, forcing the evacuation of the world-famous Paris landmark. Right-wing historian Dominique Venner, 78, put a sealed letter on the main altar before shooting himself in the head.

It’s the first suicide in decades at the landmark site, Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, the cathedral’s rector, told The Associated Press. “It’s unfortunate, it’s dramatic, it’s shocking,” Jacquin said.

Police locked down the French capital’s 850-year-old cathedral soon after the shooting at 4pm local time as some 1,500 visitors were cleared out. Hours before his death, Mr Venner used his blog to attack a new law allowing same-sex marriage in France, writing: “New spectacular and symbolic actions are needed to wake up the sleep walkers and shake the anaesthetised consciousness.

Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, tweeted: “Our respect to Dominique Venner whose last gesture, highly political, was trying to awaken the people of France.”

It’s highly unusual for the cathedral, visited by some 13 million people from around the world every year, to be evacuated.

ite Police, the Paris prosecutor and church employees gathered inside the cathedral, while puzzled tourists crowded outside on the island in the Seine River that has been home to the cathedral since the 12th century.

School groups lined up in hopes of entering the cathedral Tuesday evening, when it was expected to reopen for an evening service that church officials said would include a prayer for the man who committed suicide and other struggling souls.

Tuesday’s death comes less than a week after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic school in the French capital.

Jacquin said a few people had committed suicide by jumping from Notre Dame’s twin towers, but he had no knowledge of anyone ever committing suicide on the altar. The Eiffel Tower occasionally shuts down because of suicides or attempts to jump off its ledges.