‘We think of all Christians worldwide who were hurt by the excess and provocation of certain scenes,’ French bishops said in a statement on the Vatican website.
Catholics and other Christians spoke out strongly over the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony staging a parody of Jesus Christ’s Last Supper featuring provocatively dressed drag queens.
The outrage was swift after the July 26 performance.
“This deeply secularist, post-modern society knows who its enemy is—they’re naming it—and we should believe them.”
The controversial tableau scene featured drag artists representing different cultures posed behind a long dining table while a woman wearing an ornate silver halo stood in the middle.
In front of the display, a nearly naked blue man reportedly portraying the Greek god of fertility and wine, Dionysus, emerged on a silver platter laden with flowers and grapes.
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Organizers apologized after the ceremony.
“My wish isn’t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock,” creative director Thomas Jolly said.
“Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.”
Mr. Jolly attempted to distance the LGBT-themed performance from parallels to Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” painting, saying the performance was meant to represent Greek gods during a banquet.
Da Vinci’s famous painting depicts the moment in the Bible when Jesus Christ declared that one of his apostles would betray him.
In a statement, they said “scenes of derision” mocked Christianity—a sentiment echoed by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
“Freedom, diversity, and creativity are not compatible with insulting the beliefs of others, nor with mocking them, in ways that have nothing to do with human quality,” the statement said.
John Yep, CEO of Catholics for Catholics, a conservative Catholic group, told The Epoch Times that he doesn’t buy the idea that the performance wasn’t a mockery of Christianity, the world’s largest religion with an estimated 2.4 billion followers.
He said he believes the incident was a test for Christians worldwide to speak up and profess their faith in Jesus.
“We have that same similar situation that happened in Dodger Stadium just over a year ago,” he said.
Last June, thousands of protestors gathered at the gates of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles after the Major League Baseball team announced it would honor an anti-Catholic drag queen group for its annual LGBT “Pride Night.”
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who describe themselves as “queer and trans nuns,” perform drag shows including one portraying Christ’s crucifixion, at which scantily-clad drag queens perform a pole dance on the cross.
The group began appearing publicly in San Francisco in 1979, according to its website.
“When our kids are exposed to the stuff, and we’re pretending that that’s okay, it’s a death knell for democracy,” Mr. Yep said, noting that a child was part of the Paris drag queen performance watched by millions.
“So unless we respond, unless we take action, it doesn’t bode well for the future of France and other democracies around the world,” he said.
