OAN Staff Avril Elfi
Sunday, July 28, 2024 1:11 PM
Paris 2024 organizing committees have apologized for upsetting Catholics and other Christian groups after the opening ceremony featured drag queens, a transgender model and a singer dressed as the Greek god of wine, in a scene that recalled Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper.”
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According to a post by organizer X, the purpose of the event, which parodies a biblical scene, was to interpret Dionysus and draw attention to the “absurdity of human violence.”
The performance outraged Catholics, Christian groups and conservative politicians around the world, and forced the committee to apologize.
“Clearly there was no intention to show any disrespect to any religious group. [The opening ceremony] “We wanted to celebrate the generosity of the community,” Anne Deccan, a spokeswoman for Paris 2024, said at a news conference. “We believe this ambition has been achieved and we are truly sorry if anyone was offended.”
The Catholic Church in France said it regretted the ceremony “containing scenes of mockery and ridicule for Christianity.”
Father Emmanuel Govilliard, one of the French bishops’ representatives at the Olympics, claimed that the controversy had caused many French athletes sleepless nights in its aftermath.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, Malta’s highest-ranking Catholic official and head of the Vatican’s influential doctrinal body, claimed he had complained about an “unjustified insult” to the French ambassador in Valletta.
According to the Italian Bishops’ Conference, the event that was meant to be a celebration of French culture “took an unexpectedly negative turn and became a series of commonplace errors, with common and predictable ideological overtones.”
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