France separates church and state. So who’s responsible for Notre Dame?

That being said, day-to-day maintenance of churches and cathedrals in France often falls to cultural and religious associations. And just because the state is responsible for funding large infrastructure projects does not necessarily mean it has the money to do it.

“We know that, the public finance situation being quite challenging, there are a few historical buildings, monuments that probably have not been maintained as they used to be maintained when our public finance was better,” Lopinot said. According to a Ministry of Culture survey from the 1980s, there are about 32,000 churches, 6,000 chapels and 87 cathedrals in France. All those built before 1905 are publicly owned.

“Apart from that, it’s a huge building that requires incredible expertise to maintain because it is so old [and] because the competencies you would need for a person to work on these kinds of buildings are very rare,” Lopinot said.

There’s also the question of how enthusiastic the public is for the government to spend massive amounts of money on a cathedral.