KURT ZINDULKA – BREITBART.com
A “technical anomaly” plunged major areas of Paris into darkness on Saturday evening as a blackout struck the City of Lights just one evening after the lewd LGBT-themed Olympic Opening Ceremony drew backlash from Christians around the world.
On Saturday evening, at around 11:40 Paris time, power was cut to tens of thousands of residents of the French capital. While there was initial speculation of potential sabotage, this has since been ruled out, with the local energy firm saying that it came as a result of a “technical anomaly.”
Energy provider Enedis told Le Parisien that “a network incident due to a technical anomaly has caused power cuts in… Paris, affecting nearly 85,000 customers.”
Enedis said that the blackout impacted people in the 1st arrondissement, the location of the Louvre Museum, the 9th arrondissement, the home of the Paris Opera, the 17th arrondissement, which partially contains the Arc de Triomphe, and the 18th arrondissement, the location of the Moulin Rouge cabaret and Montmartre hill.
Strikingly, pictures shared on social media appeared to show that during the blackout, the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre) remained lit as the surrounding areas were driven into darkness. The church was constructed following a call from then-Bishop of Nantes Felix Fournier in 1870, in the wake of the defeat of Emperor Napoleon III to the Prussians. Bishop Fournier argued that a new basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was necessary to redeem France from the moral decay brought on by the French Revolution.