Vatican Issues Late Criticism of Olympics’ Drag Performance, Joining Bishops’ Growing Backlash

Part of the Olympics opening ceremony performance which sparked the controversy.

The Vatican has criticized a drag performance during the Olympics’ opening ceremonies, joining a number of bishops and political leaders around the globe expressing concern over the segment.

This week, after a notable silence, the Holy See issued a brief statement on that matter:

“The Holy See was saddened by certain scenes during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games and can only join the voices that have been raised in recent days to deplore the offence caused to many Christians and believers of other religions.

“At a prestigious event where the whole world comes together to share common values, there should be no allusions ridiculing the religious convictions of many people.

“The freedom of expression, which is clearly not called into question here, is limited by respect for others.”

At the Olympics’ opening ceremonies on July 26, one segment of the entertainment included drag performers aligned in what some have claimed is a depiction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” Outrage from the French bishops and then more church leaders quickly followed, condemning the segment as a mockery of Christianity. (That mockery seems to be solely related to the presence of drag performers.)

According to America, the Vatican had initially declined to comment in deference to France’s bishops. However, it seems the intervention of Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, may have caused the shift:

“[Erdogan] spoke about the controversy in a phone call that he made to Pope Francis following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. In a readout from the president’s office, reported by Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency, Mr. Erdogan also said the ‘immoral displays at the opening of the Paris Olympic Games caused outrage and provoked reactions.’ . . .

“It added that Turkey’s president expressed to Pope Francis his belief that ‘it was necessary to raise voices together and take a common stance in this regard’ and said the disrespect to religious values during the Olympic opening ceremony marked the ‘alarm bell for the moral collapse the world is being dragged into.'”

Given Erdogan’s intervention, Crux’s John Allen, Jr., called the Turkish president the “Francis Whisperer” because he compelled Pope Francis “to do something he obviously didn’t want to do,” which, in Allen’s estimation, was “fairly impressive.” The journalist commented:

“The Vatican statement came out at 7:47 p.m. on a Saturday night, which is an unusual hour for a communiqué on anything other than an emergency. This clearly didn’t qualify, since the ceremony in question took place a full eight days before. The Vatican had plenty of chances to comment in a more typical fashion, including the pope’s own Sunday Angelus address the week before. . .

“Whatever the case, the fact remains that for a full week, Catholics of various stripes – including, in private, several bishops who felt the papal silence was undercutting their own protests, and who communicated their disappointment to Rome – were unable to elicit a Vatican response, while Erdoğan did the trick.”

In a related development, a group of bishops released an open letter to the International Olympic Committee protesting the performance, which they described as “grotesque and blasphemous.” They questioned “how the faith of over 2 billion people can be so casually and intentionally blasphemed.” The bishops, most of whom are from the U.S., demand an apology for “this despicable action” which “opens the door to those with power doing whatever they wish to people they do not like.” Among the 27 signatories were some of the  most anti-LGBTQ+ prelates in the U.S., including Cardinal Raymond Burke, Archbishops Samuel Aquila of Denver, Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, and Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, and Bishops Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, and Michael Barber of Oakland. International signatories included Cardinal Wilfred Fox Napier, OFM, of Durban, South Africa, Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Cape Coast, Ghana, and Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Abuja, Nigeria.

While the Vatican and more bishops persist in their criticism, other Catholics continue appealing for calm. Bondings 2.0 previously reported on a number of these commentaries.

In The Times of Malta, Louisa Grech, the co-president of Malta’s Catholic LGBTQ+ group Drachma, said the controversy “set minds spinning and tongues wagging,” yet the fundamental issue is that the performance lends itself to differing perceptions and interpretations. She continues:

“Perhaps one might be too eager to judge, too eager to condemn. Responding to our initial reactions immediately without stopping to think and to reflect will sometimes lead us to jump to the wrong conclusions and to make hasty judgements.

“We wonder if there would have been the same reaction had the actors been heterosexual people rather than drag queens. Would this, perhaps, have put the context in a different dimension? Inclusion and diversity are the buzzwords in society and yet many are still experiencing marginalisation and exclusion and judgement because of their differences.

“We, as members of the LGBTIQ+ community and their parents, know and have lived the experience of being margi­nalised, excluded from society and not being able to live our truth. The fact that we now have some rights to be able to express ourselves should not put us under the guillotine again.”

Grech clarifies Drachma’s dual support for both freedom of speech and expression and the need to respect faith traditions, and writies, “whether it was a representation of Greek mythology or a parody of the Last Supper, it has definitely hurt people.” Grech concludes by reminding readers what a true Christian faith response to the controversy could be:

“[G]oing back to perception and interpretation, if we stop for a moment and think about what this tableau represents, we might find other meanings to it.

“Looking at this tableau from a positive angle, we dare to believe that perhaps the message here is that Christ would have invited members of the queer community to sit with him at the Last Supper, to have broken bread with him and to have drunk from the chalice.

“God is a God of surprises. He would have accepted members of the LGBTIQ+ community to be part of the Roman Catholic Church without any restrictions or conditions. Let’s stop and think about this.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, August 7, 2024