According to the National Pulse, Paris police arrested six members of the French pro-life group CitizenGo. The group said in an Aug. 6 post on X that the arrested activists "were forced to spend the night in jail" for merely driving a bus that decried the blasphemous display. The bus driven by CitizenGo members had the message "Stop Attacks on Christians" written on its side.
The group's legal counsel argued that simply driving a vehicle with a slogan on it does not qualify as an organized protest. They stated: "It appears impossible to constitute the crime of failing to communicate a protest because there is no protest in the presence of one unique vehicle." The defense attorney also insinuated abuse of power on the part of French prosecutors, noting that "the procedure was irregular."
The prosecutors meanwhile argued that the six CitizenGo members did not have permission for a protest. To this, the defense lawyer pointed out that government attorneys "pushed the law to its limits" to stop the bus and limit the protesters' free speech.
A separate report by the Catholic Herald also mentioned that three of the six arrested were female and that police forced them to remove their clothes. According to the news outlet, the pretext for the humiliating search was allegations that the protesters were concealing drugs. The six protesters were also taken into custody without any food or water.
The protesters were later released by law enforcers and escorted, with their bus, out of the City of Lights. CitizenGo denounced the entire incident as an "anti-Christian political and ideological persecution." (Related: Archbishop Vigano joins growing chorus of criticism of Olympics opening ceremony that mocked Christianity.)
Paris Olympics allows mocking Christianity, but bans icons lauding it
"The mockery of the Last Supper at the Olympics opening ceremony featured transgenders and drag queens in the place of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, prompting widespread controversy and condemnation across the globe," the Pulse noted.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump called the opening ceremony "a disgrace," echoing the sentiments of various politicians all over the world. The organizers of the Paris Olympics were later forced to issue a half-baked apology for the offensive display. However, Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in the U.S. state of Minnesota rejected the apology, calling its formulation a "woke duplicity."
It appears that the Paris Olympics is more than accepting when it comes to the mockery of Christian icons such as the Last Supper. But this acceptance doesn't exactly extend to icons that laud Christianity.
Brazilian surfer Joao Chianca became the target of this inequality when he was ordered to remove an image of Jesus Christ from his surfboard lest he be excluded from the Olympics' surfing event. His board had the icon of the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue, the famous landmark of the city of Rio de Janeiro in his home country.
In a now-deleted Instagram story, Chianca said he was informed two weeks before he was to compete that he has to remove the image of Cristo Redentor on his board. According to the surfer, he was reportedly not authorized to put the Messiah on his surfboard as "Christ is a religious figure" and the Olympic Games "have strict rules and focus on total neutrality."
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Watch Bishop Robert Barron denouncing the blasphemous mockery of the Last Supper at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony in the clip below.
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