MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paris 2024 apologizes for opening ceremony hurting Christian feelings

The representation was said to be of a pagan feast featuring Olympic deities in no way connected to The Last Supper

Certain parts of Friday's opening ceremony at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games were deemed to have a religious connotation that hurt the feelings of Christians and prompted an apology from the organizers.

According to the Bishops’ Conference of France, what seemed to be an LGBTQ-themed parody of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper performed by drag queens, homosexuals, and transsexuals during which a man's testicles could be seen “included scenes in which Christianity was mocked and ridiculed, which we deeply regret.”

“We thank the members of other religious denominations who have expressed their solidarity with us,” the conference added in a statement.

”Last night’s mockery of the Last Supper was shocking and insulting to Christian people around the world who watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games,“ US House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X. ”The war on our faith and traditional values knows no bounds today. But we know that truth and virtue will always prevail.“

”Opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians around the world was a really bad start, dear French,“ wrote Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.

TV host Piers Morgan posted an image of the drag queens wondering ”what the f - - - was all this about? A drag queen mockery of the Last Supper at the Olympics? Would they have mocked any other religion like this? Appalling decision.“ Morgan wrote. ”Unsurprising fury. Imagine if they’d mocked Islam like this,“ he went on.

In this scenario, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games claimed Sunday that there was no intention to disrespect any religion and that the performance, far from representing The Last Supper was inspired by Jan Harmensz van Bijlert's Feast of the Gods.

The ceremony's Artistic Director Thomas Jolly also explained that the representation featured deities of Olympus, such as Bacchus, the god of wine.

”You will never find on my part any desire to slander, to defame anything. I wanted to make a ceremony that would repair, that would reconcile. That also reaffirms the values of our Republic,“ Jolly said in a TV interview. ”The idea was to make a big pagan festival linked to the gods of Olympus,” he insisted.

Organizing Committee Chairman Tony Estanguet told reporters that “the idea was to really trigger a reflection. We wanted to have a message as strong as possible.”