Former U.S. President Donald Trump called the opening ceremony “a disgrace,” while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said it was proof that the West “denies the existence of a common culture and a common morality based on it.” Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called the scene “an insult to billions of Christians around the world.”
Church groups also criticized the event. The French Bishops’ Conference said it was a “mockery of Christianity,” while a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church called it “cultural suicide.” The Bulgarian Orthodox Church said the event was “embarrassing, seductive and offensive to all Christianity.”
Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director, said that the scene was not meant to be a reference to the painting. In an interview with French 24 hour news network BFM, Jolly said the scene was meant to resemble a pagan celebration “connected to the gods of Olympus” and was not meant to insult Christianity.
“You will never find in me a desire to mock and denigrate anyone,” Jolly said.
Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps offered a somewhat lukewarm apology, saying: “If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”
“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. On the contrary, I think with Thomas Jolly, we really did try to celebrate community tolerance,” she said.
