Columnist Sally Jenkins criticizes conservative critics of Last Supper act at Paris 2024 Olympics

PARIS, FRANCE: Columnist Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post has criticized conservative and Christian critics of the alleged Last Supper caricature that was shown during last week's Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony.

Jenkins wrote a column for the outlet requesting that people who were offended by the display of drag queens, whom many claim depicted Jesus Christ and his Apostles in Leonardo da Vinci's renowned painting "The Last Supper," stop being offended and understand that the purpose of the display was to help people empathize with one another.

Sally Jenkins' statement to Christians who were offended by the display

"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."

Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony caused widespread outrage among Christians and conservatives 

Christians and conservatives around the world were outraged by a brief segment from the opening ceremony of the Olympics in the French capital. Most saw the scene as a mockery of Leonardo da Vinci's artwork and the main event from the New Testament, with a group of drag queens lined up along one side of a long table and one in a halo crown posing in the center.

Prominent figures like Elon Musk and Catholic Bishop Robert Barron condemned the display

Prominent individuals such as Catholic Bishop Robert Barron and Elon Musk denounced the exhibit. 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."

Thomas Jolly and media rushed to discredit such criticism

Jolly and the press hurried to refute such complaints. The director insisted, a point that other sites repeated, that the display was not of "The Last Supper" but rather of another classical work.

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.’" 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."

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

Internet blasts Sally Jenkins for defending the Paris Olympics' Last Supper act

Netizens slammed the renowned Washnington Post columnist after he tried to defend to the disgraceful Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony. One X user tweeted, "Yeah cause God really appreciates trans men dancing in drag right next to young kids." "WAPO gets worse every single day!!! I hear it’s about to go bankrupt. Good!" added another. 

"Whatever it was, it was weird and disgusting while pretending to be edgy and artsy," opined one while someone else remarked, "And they wonder why print media is dying." 

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