In Paris, for the first time in the world, one of the metropolitan temples - the Cathedral of Saint Eustache (Saint-Eustache in French) - organized the production of its own perfume with the unusual name Le Dieu Cerf ("God-deer").

The perfume, the church said, is not intended for perfume shops and boutiques. They can be purchased directly from the temple or on its website. True, they immediately clarified that it was not about buying and selling, but about "voluntary donation." More specifically, it is proposed to lay out 69 euros for a bottle of 50 ml and 29 euros for the smaller one - 15 ml. As the curé of Saint-Eustache Yves Trochery told, "they do something like this with candles, which are, as you know, in churches in the public domain."

The project began to take shape when the German perfumer Ralf Schwiger was attracted to it, who managed to work with famous Parisian fashion houses, including Hermes and Yves Saint Laurent. This expert made a bouquet of four dozen scents, while focusing on those with forest and woody notes: Saint Eustathius was considered the patron saint of hunters. The "nose", as the professionals who create new scents are often called, responded to the result as follows: "The result is a fragrance reminiscent of colognes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There is something attractive and hedonistic about it." The money from the first thousand bottles will go to the cathedral's treasury in full. As for the rest of the sales, half of the funds received will also go to church needs. In particular, we are talking about repair and restoration work inside the church, as well as about financing charitable programs of the parish.

How do you like that?

Hieromonk Stefan (Igumnov), Secretary for Inter-Christian Relations of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate:

In Christian churches in different parts of the world, belonging to different traditions, of course, there are a lot of differences. In particular, moments related to attitudes, for example, to such issues as the implementation of the Christian witness in the modern world. Of course, the conditions in which each church lives are usually taken into account. It is also important to distinguish between attitudes towards certain everyday things. Therefore, it seems to me, to treat such news as the appearance of one's own temple fragrance or perfume in the Church of St. Eustathius should be taken into account this "factor of cultural difference." The French mentality and tradition of life in this country are different from the Russian ones. And probably, when defining our attitude to such news, we should proceed from the fact that when making certain decisions, their reasons are much more clear to French Christians and Catholics than to us. In Russia, such facts, perhaps, would have caused a different reaction both among the priests and among the parishioners. But of course, there is no talk of any negative perception of such an idea by the parishioners of a particular church in Paris.

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