Cardinal Raymond Burke from the Roman Catholic Church has come out swinging against the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, calling it “debased and blasphemous.”
The opening made headlines around the world as a performance, which included drag queens and profanity, seemed to mock “The Last Supper.”
Choreographer of the scene, Thomas Jolly, recently dismissed any intention to belittle Christianity, telling France 24 his intended depiction was “a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus.”
CatholicVote reported on Wednesday that Cardinal Burke commented on the opening ceremony scene in his homily for a Mass celebrating the 16th anniversary of the dedication of the church at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“On this past Friday, we witnessed an unbelievable manifestation of the darkness and sin in our world: the abominable mockery of the Holy Eucharist at its Institution for the opening of the Summer Olympics in Paris,” the Cardinal said. “It is difficult to imagine anything more debased and blasphemous.”
He went on to declare, “That such an event could take place shows us, in a most painful way, how what was once a Christian culture has become the theater of Satan and those who cooperate with his thoroughly evil plans, the plans of ‘a murderer from the beginning’ who ‘has nothing to do with the truth,’ the plans of ‘a liar and the father of lies.’”
Arguing that its performance was about more than just entertainment, he said it symbolizes a larger moral dilemma in the public square.
“Our disgust and anger about what happened at the Summer Olympics awakens anew our consciousness of so many other manifestations of the open rebellion against God and His plan for our salvation in the world in which we live: attacks on human life and its cradle in the family created by the marriage of a man and a woman, and attacks on religion itself and its free exercise.”
