Paris Olympics: Highly Criticized Official Poster of Closing Ceremony

Fifteen days ago, the Summer Olympics began in the French capital. Sharp criticism accompanied the scandalous opening ceremony, and virtually every day of the competition was marked by scandals, from scarce food in the athletes’ dining facilities to the polluted and poisonous water of the Seine and the many problems surrounding the participation of transgender people in women’s competition.

On Sunday, August 11, the Olympic Games in Paris will become history. Many will breathe a sigh of relief, and polemics will reverberate in the pages of newspapers, on television, and on social media for a long time to come.

And there are those who are preparing for an event even worse on the evening of August 11: and that’s because Thomas Jolly will still be at the helm. No censorship, no corrections after the harsh criticism that followed the July 26 performance, when a banquet with “transvestites” sparked outrage throughout Christian world that saw Leonardo da Vinci’s sacrilegious parody of the Upper Room, also known as the Last Supper.

“The closing ceremony will go exactly as we envisioned. It was conceived a long time ago,” Jolly told, “and there was no reason to change what we wanted to do from the beginning. All our freedoms are guaranteed because this is a country where you are free to create.”

Meanwhile, for Archbishop Savva, the second major representative of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the official poster for the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics is nothing less than “an icon of the devil.”

In the center of the black poster is a golden and glowing apparently male figure that falls on the globe, more specifically on Western Europe, also painted in black and white. In this context, the influential Paris-born Russian archbishop quoted a passage from the prophet Isaiah that describes Satan’s fall from heaven: “How did you fall from heaven, Lucifer, son of the dawn?” (Isaiah 14:12-16, Italian Episcopal Conference edition).

Meanwhile, supporters of conspiracy theories believe the ceremonies in Paris “clearly described what awaits humanity in the next four years.” The next Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles, the American city of “angels,” from July 14 to July 30, 2028.