The Paris Olympic Committee has bowed to pressure from the Catholic Church to more properly represent the Church’s values in the closing ceremony. The event will now include a scene depicting a wide-scale, systematic cover up of child sex abuse.
The change comes following an outcry from some Church leaders and conservative commentators who claimed the ‘last supper scene’ depicted in the opening ceremony was not faithful to the original.
“We want to get this right,” a Paris Olympic Committee spokesperson said. “We want to make sure we authentically re-create this well-known, regularly recurring scene from the Church’s history, without exaggeration or omission”.
While organisers remained tight-lipped on how the scene may unfold, it is believed the re-creation will include a number of senior clergy refusing to answer questions from law enforcement, while abusive priests are moved from parish to parish without consequence. “We want it to be totally realistic,” the spokesperson said.
A 2021 inquiry found that approximately 330,000 children were abused by the French Catholic Church over a 70-year period.
