Historic York Minster Reopens

Four years after it was struck by lightning and ravaged by fire, a painstakingly restored wing of York Minster, the largest medieval church in Western Europe, was reopened Friday by Queen Elizabeth II.

At a thanksgiving ceremony attended by 1,500 people, Archbishop of York John Habgood said it was ridiculous to believe God willed the lightning that sparked the fire in the 13th-Century south transept--one arm of the cross-shaped Gothic church.

Habgood was referring to suggestions that the bolt that hit the church July 9, 1984, was divine retribution for the consecration of controversial David Jenkins as bishop of Durham at the minster two days earlier.

It took 67 experts four years and $4 million to repair the damage.

The 16th-Century Rose Window, celebrating the marriage of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York in 1486, was blackened and cracked into a jigsaw of 40,000 fragments.

“We kept faith with those medieval craftsmen who created the window hundreds of years ago,” chief glazier Peter Gibson said. “(We did) our best to ensure that their skill and their work on the glass live on for future generations.”