In the wake of reports (here and here) that certain sections were offended by the ‘Last Supper’ skit performed during the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, a video (here, here and here) of a huge crowd allegedly gathered in France to pray as a protest is doing the rounds on social media. It is being claimed that after the Olympics ceremony, ‘Thousands of Christians in France gathered to pray after the Olympics opening mocked Jesus Christ.’ We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Video of thousands of Christians in France gathered to pray after the disrespectful ‘Last Supper’ sketch was performed at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Fact: This is an old video from 2022. It shows Catholics in France signing ‘Ave Maria’ at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. This has nothing to do with the ongoing Paris 2024 Olympics. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the truthfulness of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on the internet using a few keyframes of the viral video. This search led us to Facebook posts from August 2022 that contained the same visuals as the viral video.
According to Shalom World News, the visuals show a huge assembly of Catholics singing Ave Maria at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. This happened during the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The same video was also posted on ‘X’ on 15 August 2022, by the ‘Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes’, the place where this feast was arranged. This makes it clear that the video is almost two years old and has nothing to do with the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Additionally, we learned that the Paris Olympics organisers apologised (here and here) to the people who were offended by the Last Supper sketch. They clarified that it was not their intention to show disrespect to any religious group.
To sum up, an old and unrelated video from 2022 is being shared as a recent video of Christians in France gathered to pray against the Last Supper parody sketch performed during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
