Emotion in Strasbourg after the disappearance of the "green ray" of the cathedral

The information had gone unnoticed, but appears on the cathedral's website under the heading "Did you know?", in the paragraph devoted to the green ray: "Warning: the following ended on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. The + raw glass +, revealing until this date a + ray of green color +, has definitely been obstructed.

Requested by AFP, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac) of the Grand Est, which is to issue a press release on this subject in the afternoon, indicated that the glass in question had indeed been replaced during a "restoration", confirming information from the regional daily newspaper The Latest News from Alsace (DNA).

This "green ray", which attracted hundreds of tourists and onlookers, appeared during the spring (March 20 or 21 at 11:38 a.m.) and autumn (September 22 or 23 at 12:24 p.m.) equinoxes and "illuminated the crucified Christ of the pulpit" of the cathedral, recalls the site of the religious building.

The stained glass window in question had been installed there in 1876. The sun passed through the left foot of Judah, ancestor of Christ and son of Jacob, to produce the famous ray.

But "the projection of the sun in a ray of green color had appeared most likely following a restoration dating from 1972 during which the foot of Judah would have been replaced by a raw glass and, therefore, very transparent" , explains the website.

It was in fact that year that the phenomenon was discovered by Maurice Rosart, an engineer-surveyor.

The latter immediately cried "scandal" when he learned that the department was not there this weekend: it "was purely and simply deleted", he took offense in an email sent. at AFP.

"This act is a bad blow to the people of Strasbourg, to Culture, to Secularism, to the Enlightenment", he further lamented, recalling that a cache had already been briefly affixed in the spring of 1990 to the stained glass window, preventing the radius to form.

This phenomenon has long fueled controversy, between supporters of esoteric explanations and ecclesiastical authorities who have long seen behind it only a simple "chance".