Notre-Dame Cathedral History Fact: Joan of Arc Beatification

Did You Know? On April 18, 1909, the tragic French heroine Joan of Arc, who led a French army to victory over the English at the Siege of Orléans (1428–29) during the Hundred Years’ War and was later burned at the stake as a heretic by the English, was beatified in Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral by Pope Pius X. This is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person’s entrance into Heaven.