(LifeSiteNews) — Catholic bishops in Africa are speaking out against the opening ceremonies at the 2024 Paris Olympics that they called a “decadent caricature” of the Last Supper.
In a statement provided to ACI Africa this week, the bishops of the Archdiocese of Ibadan in West Nigeria rebuked the “sad” performance that they said “detracts from the status of the Olympics and belies all claims to enduring civility and respect for freedom of religion in the West.”
“As Africans, we have a great respect for the divine and for religious sentiments,” they said. The ceremony was part of “deliberate ongoing attempts in Europe and America to repurpose and demean Christian themes without regard for peace loving Christians who practice and profess their religion in peace.”
The Catholic Archdiocese of Ibadan is overseen by 77-year-old Metropolitan Archbishop Gabriel ‘Leke Abegunrin, who was appointed to the role in 2013 by Pope Francis.
As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, Abegunrin slammed the West in April 2015 for pushing abortion, homosexuality, and gender confusion onto the Nigerian people. In 2016, he signed a statement warning the country’s health minister about scrapping a century-old pro-life law.
The Archdiocese of Ibadan borders Africa’s Atlantic Coast. It oversees the Ekiti, Ilorin, Ondo, Osogbo, and Oyo dioceses. Nigeria has a total of nine Latin Rite provinces that guide the country’s 44 suffragan dioceses. The city of Ibadan, located in Oyo, is the nation’s third most populated city with an estimated 3.6 million people.
According to a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law released in February 2024, the year 2023 marked the bloodiest on record for Islamic attacks against Christians in Nigeria, with over 8,000 killed and thousands more abducted and forcibly displaced, including priests.
What’s more, a group of about 40 religious freedom experts and non-profits sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January calling on him to testify to Congress about why the State Department has not included Nigeria on its list of countries where severe violations of religious liberty are taking place. The letter recalls that since 2009 more than 50,000 Christians have been killed in the country and that 18,000 churches and 2,500 Christian schools have been targeted as well.
Ibadan’s bishops were holding a two-day meeting in the Diocese of Ondo to discuss the domestic problems in the country, which is experiencing protests due to political corruption and mismanagement by elected officials. In their statement, the bishops emphasized the importance of having unfailing faith.
“Regardless of what we go through as Africans we must never disrespect or thrash religious symbols and sentiments which touch people at their deepest levels of their being. To do this is to throw our humanizing and spiritual values and ideals to the dogs,” they said.