French Bishops Issue Statement on Olympic Ceremony Backlash
- Milton Quintanilla Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
- Published Jul 29, 2024
The opening of the 2024 Paris Olympics came under intense scrutiny last weekend due to what many assumed was a parody of the Last Supper featuring drag queens. According to American Magazine, the scene with the drag queens was fashioned after a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic wall painting in Milan’s Dominican convent of the Last Supper.
However, later sources showed Thomas Jolly, opening ceremony director, explaining that “The Last Supper” was not the inspiration behind the scene, but Greek gods were. Jolly claims, “Dionysus arrives at the table because he is the Greek god of celebration.” The particular scene was titled “Festivity.”
The Olympic Games official profile on X, formerly Twitter, explained in a post that the depiction made us “aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”
The French bishops issued a statement on July 27 denouncing the scenes at the opening of the Olympic games.
Although the ceremony was a “marvelous display of beauty and joy, rich in emotion and universally acclaimed,” they said, it “unfortunately included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity, which we deeply regret.”
“We would like to thank the members of other religious denominations who have expressed their solidarity with us,” the French bishops wrote. “We are thinking of all the Christians on every continent who have been hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes. We want them to understand that the Olympic celebration goes far beyond the ideological biases of a few artists,” they added.
The bishops also stated that the values promoted by sport and Olympism must contribute to the “need for unity and fraternity that our world so desperately needs, while respecting everyone’s convictions, around the sport that brings us together.”
Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard of Digne, the special representative of the Holy See for the 2024 Paris Olympics, said that he was “deeply hurt” after seeing the images of the drag queen table scene on social media.
“What shocked me most is that the freedom of spirit and tone claimed by those who set this up shouldn’t be directed against others,” Bishop Gobilliard said. “You can make fun of your own ideas, laugh at yourself, why not? But to mock the faith and religion of others in this way …is very shocking. That was my first reaction.”
He contended that the Olympic Games are the last place to create such divisions.
“Why there?” Bishop Gobilliard asked in a conversation with OSV News. “It is contrary to the Olympic Charter, to the dimension of unity that is present in its values, to the idea of bringing everyone together, without political and religious demonstrations. Why exclude believers and Christians? It was the last place to do that. We were to respect the spirit of the Olympic Charter. We are out of it now.”
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Pascal Deloche
