Paris Organizers Apologize After Last Supper Backlash

There are dissenting views among art historians about its intended meaning, but clergy strenuously denounced a performance at the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday as an attempt to mock Christianity. The scene featured Barbara Butch, an LGBTQ+ icon, flanked by drag artists and dancers in what looked like a re-creation of Leonardo da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper, per the AP. France's Catholic Bishops' Conference said the ceremony included "scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity," and an American bishop called the performance "gross mockery." On Sunday, Olympics officials apologized while defending the presentation.

The ceremony's organizers have been vague about the images, the New York Times reports. The artistic director said Saturday that the idea wasn't to "be subversive, or shock people, or mock people." The ceremony overall, he said, was designed to "send a message of love and of inclusion." On Sunday, the Paris 2024 spokeswoman said, "If people have taken any offense, we are, of course, really, really sorry." A spokesperson representing the Holy See at the Games expressed hurt. "The fact that our religion should be mocked is usual and we are used to blasphemy in France, but the context isn't the same," Bishop Emmanuel Gobillard told NBC News. "In an event that brings together all or part of the population, I found this staging hurtful and out of place."

The Games' official account on X said the scene with the blue-painted man was an interpretation of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry, which "makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings." An expert in Renaissance art pointed out that there were 17 drag queens rather than Jesus' 12 apostles, disqualifying it as a Last Supper evocation. "When I looked at the clips, The Last Supper isn't necessarily what springs to mind," Louise Marshall said. "It seems very lighthearted and funny and witty and very inclusive." Another expert differed. "It's so typical of The Last Supper iconography that to read it in any other way might be a little foolhardy," Sasha Grishin said. (More 2024 Paris Olympics stories.)