The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics has been criticised over an apparent parody of the Last Supper that featured drag queens.
Over a dozen drag queens posed along a table in a scene reminscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting that depicts Jesus’ final meal together with his disciples before his execution.
During the scene, broadcast live to tell the tale Friday evening from a rain-soaked Paris, the drag queens may very well be seen writhing suggestively along the table on either side of a girl appearing to represent Jesus. She stands still within the centre wearing a headpiece harking back to a halo and holding her hands in a heart shape.
The scene has sparked a backlash on social media and are available under particular fire for appearing to incorporate a baby.
The CEO of the UK Evangelical Alliance, Gavin Calver, said that while he hoped the Paris Olympics can be a fantastic success, he called the depiction “utterly insensitive, unnecessary and offensive”.
“However, it really was appalling to see Christianity so openly mocked within the opening ceremony with the unbelievably crass portrayal of the Last Supper,” he wrote on X.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has recently called himself a “cultural Christian”, wrote on X that the performance was “extremely disrespectful to Christians”, adding in one other post, “Christianity has turn into toothless.”
Some social media commentators called the scene “woke” while others suggested that organisers wouldn’t have mocked Islam in this fashion.
American Catholic Bishop Robert Barron called it “gross mockery of the Last Supper” and questioned why France felt the necessity to “mock this very central moment in Christianity” on an occasion that’s imagined to exhibit one of the best of the country’s culture. He went on to say that France’s culture “is grounded very much in Christianity”.
“Would they ever have dared mock Islam in an identical way? Would they ever have dreamed of mocking on this gross, public way a scene from the Quran? As I say, everyone knows the reply to that,” he said in a video posted to X.
Podcaster Rev Daniel French responded to the bishop’s post by calling on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to issue an identical statement.
“The opening Olympic ceremony mocked Christianity and the Last Supper in a way it never would have for some other religion,” he said.
