WaPo columnist defends Olympics ‘Last Supper’ display, says artist may be ‘better worshiper’ than critics

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Bishop Robert Barron: Paris Olympics opening ceremony a 'clear mockery' of Last Supper

Bishop Robert Barron reacts to a drag queens parody allegedly mocking Christianity at the 2024 Paris Olympics on 'Fox News Live.'

Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins blasted Christian and conservative critics of the apparent Last Supper mockery depicted at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony last week.

Jenkins’ column in the outlet demanded those offended by a display of drag queens many say portrayed Jesus Christ and his Apostles in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting "The Last Supper" that there wasn’t anything to be offended by and that the display was about getting viewers to empathize with others.

"All the religious police see are phantom insults," Jenkins said of the Christians offended at the display designed by the ceremony’s theatrical director Thomas Jolly.

She argued Jolly is more Christian than those offended by his work, writing, "Perhaps, just perhaps, Jolly is a better, truer worshiper than his critics. At the least, he did something they have failed to do: He saw faces and framed them with interest, rather than hostility."

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A view of the Eiffel Tower with the Olympics rings pictured with national flags of competing countries from the Place du Trocadero ahead of Paris 2024 Olympic Games  on July 21, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kevin Voigt/GettyImages) (Kevin Voigt/GettyImages)

The brief moment from the Olympics opening ceremony in the French capital caused widespread outrage among Christians and conservatives throughout the world, with most seeing a group of drag queens lined up along one side of a long table – with one in a halo crown posing in the center – as a mockery of da Vinci's work and the central event from the New Testament. 

Prominent figures like Elon Musk and Catholic Bishop Robert Barron condemned the display. Musk posted to X, stating, "This was extremely disrespectful to Christians." 

In a video posted to the platform, Barron, the bishop for the Winona-Rochester diocese, added, "What do I see but this gross mockery of the Last Supper."

Jolly and the media rushed to discredit such criticism. The director insisted the display was not of "The Last Supper," but of another classical work, which many outlets repeated.

Jenkins made this argument in her Thursday piece, writing, "That drag queen sequence was meant to refer, like Delville, to Greek pagan celebrations — not, as some Christian leaders insist, to mock Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper.’"

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A glimpse of some of the performers who appeared in the Last Supper depiction in the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.  (REUTERS/Tingshu Wang)

She then argued the criticism was fueled by religious hostility to "experimental art."

"Why some church leaders are so often hostile to experimental art and treat it as anti-faith is an unanswerable question. But it’s certainly not a modern phenomenon," Jenkins wrote, adding, "Those flogging the Opening Ceremonies over one fleeting pagan tableau in a spellbinding four-hour ceremony belong to the same dry line of self-appointed judges left in the dust of history who misjudged works in their own day for not being properly venerating."

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In her concluding paragraph, she added, "Critics of the Opening Ceremonies certainly have paid attention – to all the wrong things."