One of the floats on the Paris Olympics’ parade of the boats caused general outrage among the public worldwide. A vulgar parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” was deployed to ostensibly underline LGBT pride. A gaggle of drag queens were gathered around a table, arrayed as Jesus and his disciples. The scene included a naked figure lying on the table, who apparently was the Greek god of wine, Dionysios, and a guillotined Marie Antoinette, carrying her severed head.
When the pictures appeared on the media, general revulsion was expressed. Protests came from all corners of the globe at this attack on Christianity and on the great artist and scientist, Leonardo da Vinci. The Russian Orthodox Church called it a “counterculture of atheism.” There were protests from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of France, from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, from Greece, the home of the Olympics, as well as from U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán observed that the Olympic Games in Paris showed that the West has no common moral foundation.
The Olympic organizers in Paris worked overtime to eliminate the offending views from the internet and had to issue a public apology for the exhibit.
Unfortunately, this was only beginning in this year’s Paris Olympics. The refusal to allow Russia to participate in the Games, which traditionally are aimed at emphasizing the universality of sports, tainted them from the beginning. The scandal over the Last Supper parody only stressed the failure of the Paris Olympics to carry forward the “Olympic spirit.”
