PARIS (OSV News) — The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games — a sports festival aimed to unite all nations of the world — created shock and disbelief instead as Catholics around the world felt offended by the parody of the Last Supper, which was part of the opening ceremony.
The four-hour spectacle July 26 started with a parade of athletes down the Seine River, accompanied by music and dancing scenes on top French monuments.
Notre Dame Cathedral, still under construction prior to its Dec. 8 opening, was also featured with an extensive dance segment paying tribute to the construction workers who are rebuilding the icon of Paris following a 2019 fire. Dancers appeared to do aerial work on the scaffolding. The bells of the cathedral rang for the first time since the 2019 fire that nearly destroyed the building.
However as the show progressed, television cameras showed drag queens, one of whom wore a crown, seated at a table. The shape of the crown brought to mind a monstrance.
The scene was immediately interpreted as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic wall painting in Milan’s Dominican convent of the Last Supper.
The drag queen table scene was later complemented with a nude singer appearing in the middle of a fruit basket, to represent Dionysus, ancient Greece’s God of wine, with the Olympic Games official profile on X, formerly Twitter saying the depiction made us “aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.” Read rest if article here.