(LifeSiteNews) — We could have known. Producer and actor Thomas Jolly, who stage-managed the scandalous Paris Olympics opening ceremony which sparked outrage the world over, told Le Figaro in June 2023 that he viewed the opening of the Olympic Games he was tasked with choreographing as “a grand pagan ceremony.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what could be a kind of grand pagan opening ceremony. Like when the Greeks organized those great processions that preceded the Games and the fair that accompanied them,” he said, “or the Dionysia,” the yearly celebrations in honor of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine-making, fruit, fertility, festivity, insanity, and ritual madness. With such premises, Friday evening’s blasphemous tableaux on the river Seine in Paris could only be just that: a prideful rejection of order, norms, decency, reason, and faith.
READ: ‘God is not mocked’: Blasphemous depiction of Last Supper at Olympic ceremony sparks outrage
And not just any faith: millions upon millions of spectators the world over were shocked by a vulgar and obscene parody of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci in which Our Lord was mockingly portrayed by a well-known lesbian Parisian disc jockey, Leslie Barbara Butch, wearing a halo reminiscent of the Sacred Host. She was surrounded by a grotesque troupe of drag queen “apostles” in lascivious attire and poses, but also an obviously very young child, as if to underscore that innocence must be destroyed.
In an exclusive statement to LifeSiteNews, one French bishop, Dominique Rey of the diocese of Toulon, condemned the opening ceremony’s attack on Our Lord and those who love and serve Him. He said:
Many people, not only Christians, were profoundly scandalized by what happened at the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris which included a parody of the Last Supper. We saw Christ disguised as a drag-queen. The Olympic Games are an international sporting event, intended to promote unity, respect, and fraternity. It should not be the occasion for scenes that are blasphemous and insulting. The climate of peace that should reign during this event depends on it. It is our responsibility as Christians publicly to express our incomprehension, our discontent, and our suffering in the face of such expressions that have no place here. We must keep in mind in our prayers, through acts of reparation, in particular through the Eucharist and the celebration of Mass, the source and summit of Christian life, all that has offended the fraternity and the peace that are so precious to us in a fragmented world that is so marked by violence.
Bishop Joseph Strickland also made a comment to LifeSiteNews:
The bigotry toward Christians and the blasphemy of Jesus Christ, God’s Divine Son on display at the Olympics is a new low for our human community. Shame on those who produced this mockery, shame on the Olympic Committee and the nation of France for allowing it. This tarnishes what should be the noble celebration of sport and competition.
I urge the athletes not to run for the fading crown of worldly acclaim, instead run for the crown that does not fade, eternal life in Jesus Christ, the risen Son of God.
Artistic director Thomas Jolly is a self-proclaimed homosexual who created the “queerest” Olympic Games opening ceremony ever, validating the expectations of PinkNews, “the world’s largest and most influential LGBTQ+ led media brand,” to whom he talked one day before his show on the river Seine. He said the event would be a success only “if everyone feels represented in it.” Hence a sort of faux artistic gay pride, with its outré pink costumes, glitter and feathers compounded by extra vulgarity, tranvestite, drag and camp esthetics, as well as “woke” overstatement.
In the face of Friday night’s blasphemous attack on Our Lord’s sacrifice and His unutterable suffering for the sake of man’s redemption, and on the institution of the Eucharist, there were many angry and indignant reactions. A well-known Dominican, Father Paul-Adrien, posted a video in which he slammed the tame statement made by the French Bishops’ conference deploring that “this ceremony unfortunately included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity, which we deeply regret.”
“I believe that this doesn’t go far enough,” he said. Deploration is a “passive emotion,” while what we need here is “an active emotion.” “We’d like to see the French bishops move from the passive to the active register” because it is our “honor” that has been “unjustly attacked,” and this justifies “anger.”
“We need to rearm, morally and intellectually, and to stop accepting and putting up with everything, because Christianity is not a floorcloth, it’s not a doormat on which the whole world can wipe its boots: it is the reign of God, the Gospel preached on earth, it is salvation offered to sinners… We have preached too much about mercy. And having preached so much about mercy, people take it for cowardice. There are limits to dialogue… This is also charity: in the name of charity, I’m going to try to stop people from sinking into evil… We belong to a generation of Christians that has had enough of being spat in the face and we will not accept it, we will not accept it any longer. They have taken our mercy for cowardice; today God is asking us, in the name of this mercy to which we must give back its rightful place, for pedagogical and temporal reasons, to stop being merciful. To win, one must fight. Love will fight, and love shall win,” the friar said.
His vigorous statement was one of many published on the Internet by local French priests.
While the parody of the Last Supper was the most obvious and direct attack on Our Lord and on the Catholic and Christian faithful, Friday’s show contained many objectionable scenes attacking faith, morals, good taste, and the tenets of civilization.
After the “tableau” of the Last Supper, a giant covered dish was placed on the mock table in front of the troop of drag queens and the outrageously vulgar lesbian DJ: singer and artist Philippe Katerine emerged from a bed of flowers, all but naked and painted blue from top to toe apart from his yellow beard and garlands of green leaves and tomatoes and singing “I am simply naked.” The scene was cut by local television stations in several countries.
One of the more shocking moments featured a heavy metal song performed by the English group Gojira screaming “Ça ira” from the façade of the Conciergerie, where Queen Marie Antoinette was kept prisoner during the Terreur in the French Revolution for several months before she was publicly guillotined on October 16, 1793. The scene opened with multiple digital images in the building’s windows showing the beheaded queen bearing her head in her hands, singing the revolutionary song “Ah ça ira, ça ira…” – “Everything will be all right, the aristocrats will go on the lampposts; the aristocrats will be hanged.”
It was a gory reminder of the bloodiest episodes of the French Revolution, and it occurred on the eighth anniversary of the day when Father Jacques Hamel’s throat was slit by a radical Muslim in the north of France.
Father Christian Venard, almoner of the Public Forces in Monaco, posted the following comment on X, in which he exhorted the Catholic Church to protest against the outrageous attacks against the faith under pretext of secularity:
Will you defend the honor and the memory of the tens of thousands of priests, men and women religious, men, women and children who were violently persecuted and murdered during the French Revolution out of hatred for the Catholic faith?
But as if this was not enough, the show included a sculpture of a golden calf’s head right on the platform where the Olympic flame was given a place of honor. A pale horse ridden by a hooded, faceless flame-bearer rode the waters of the Seine: it was said to portray Sequana, the river-god of the Gauls, but looked like the horseman of the Apocalypse bringing death and destruction.
In yet another disturbing scene a multi-race, multi-sex “throuple” – one white and one black man and a white woman – were shown on film on their way to an obvious sexual encounter while exchanging equivocal glances.
African-born singer Aya Nakamura – whose uncertain French provoked anger at her being chosen as a cultural representative of France for the Olympics – appeared emerging from the French National Academy, an institution created in the 17th century by Cardinal de Richelieu for the exaltation of the French language, singing a medley of her incomprehensible songs while caressing her own generous curves, while the stately choir of the French Army’s Garde Républicaine danced and wiggled around her.
Inevitably, John Lennon’s revolutionary song Imagine was performed in a melancholy tone: this hymn to globalism is a clear rejection of religion and therefore of God.
Several historical feminine figures portrayed as golden statues were also given their moment of glory; they included Simone Veil who was explicitly presented as having made possible “abortion rights” in France.
The French Christian rights organization AGRIF (Alliance against racism and for the respect of French and Christian Identity) has announced it will take the LGBT propaganda, explicit sexual material presented to millions of children watching the event, the glorification of violence against women and the “abominable sacrilege against Jesus-Christ” to the courts in its capacity as an official “anti-racist” organization that can seize jurisdictions in its own right.
French Catholics have been called upon all over the country to pray the rosary on Sunday afternoon at 5 p.m. in churches and chapels and in front of public roadside shrines.
In Lebanon, the minister for Youth and Sports, George Kallas, made a forceful public statement: “The Paris Olympics have suffered a moral setback. The violation of the sanctity of the Christian religion has undermined the dignity and values of France. Had I been present at the opening ceremony, I would have withdrawn immediately.”
