| Vandals have daubed a swastika and written "death to the Jews" on a wall in front of Paris's Notre Dame cathedral overnight, police say. The act of vandalism, the first in Paris since a series of desecrations recently at Jewish, Muslim and Christian cemeteries in eastern France, was discovered on Saturday on the day Pope John Paul began a two-day pilgrimage to Lourdes in the southwest. The facade of the Gothic cathedral, one of the best-known churches in the Catholic world, was untouched, police said. "Writing was found on one of the low walls ... in front of the cathedral," a police spokesman said. "Three stones of the low wall were also worked loose but were left in place." Church officials notified police of the incident on Saturday morning. The public prosecutor has asked the police to open an inquiry, the spokesman said. The mayor of Paris, condemning the vandalism, said that the anti-semitic sign and words had been removed and the stones put back in place. The incident "inspires me with as much sadness as disgust," Betrand Delanoe said in a statement. "I sincerely hope that the writers of this new insult to the values of our civilisation will be rapidly identified and severely punished." |