Following the blaze that devastated the 850-year-old Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, it has been revealed that the interior of the building was fully 3D-mapped by a researcher, which may help in the restoration of the building.

Notre Dame cathedral was badly damaged following a fire yesterday, devastating many worldwide who watched as firefighters attempted to contain the blaze. The fire is now under control but much damage has been done to the cathedral, luckily restoration efforts may be made easier due to the fact that the interior of the building was fully 3D-mapped by architectural historians, the MIT Technology Review reports.

Andrew Tallon, a now-deceased architectural historian, began a project to map the cathedral in 2015. Tallon used lasers to map the entire cathedral, measuring the speed at which the lasers reached a target in order to create a precisely detailed image of the cathedral. These scans will likely be crucial to efforts to restore the cathedral; Tallon can be seen describing the process used to capture the cathedral in the video below:

Father Jean-Marc Fournier, the chaplain to the Parisian fire brigade, has been hailed as a hero as he entered the burning cathedral to save priceless relics and works of art as the cathedral burned. The priest reportedly formed a human chain to carry the items away from the fire. Breitbart London reported yesterday:

Following up that report, the Katholiek Nieuwsblad states Fr Fournier has a history of Christian mission under dangerous circumstances. The newspaper reports he responded with the fire brigade to the 2015 Bataclan terror attacks in Paris, where Islamist extremists killed 90 with rifles and suicide vests at a rock concert in the city, where he was “quickly on the scene after the attack… he helped remove the wounded from the hall and prayed with the bodies of the victims.” The priest also served as a chaplain to the French army and survived an ambush in Afghanistan where ten French soldiers were killed. Television network Sky News reports the remarks of one member of the Paris emergency services who said of the chaplain: “Father Fournier is an absolute hero. “He showed no fear at all as he made straight for the relics inside the cathedral, and made sure they were saved. He deals with life and death every day, and shows no fear.” Among the relics saved in the effort was Notre-Dame’s most famous and revered and holy relic, the gold-encrusted Crown of Thorns, believed to be the wreath of thorns that was placed on the head of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion. That the relic was saved flashed around the world on Monday evening, but news of further items saved emerged Tuesday morning.

Breitbart News has reported extensively on the Notre Dame cathedral fire, live updates on the story can be found here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com