Bishop Keenan has responded to the Olympics Opening Ceremony that took place in Paris on 26th July 2024. 

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Bishop John Keenan of the Diocese of Paisley has reacted to the mockery of the Last Supper that was broadcasted to the world during the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Games. 

Full text below:


Dear Brothers and Sisters, 
 
Like countless others, I was shocked by footage from the Paris Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in which a mockery of the Last Supper was enacted. 
 
The Sacred Meal the LORD shared with His disciples on the eve of His Passion and Death was the pivotal moment of human history.  In the Upper Room in Jerusalem Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, gave His Flesh and Blood for the salvation of the world in a new and eternal Covenant and instituted the Sacred Priesthood to perpetuate its saving grace through all Creation and history.
 
These central mysteries of our Christian faith were ridiculed by an ideology that thinks it can become the new religion of a secular Europe on the back of disfiguring its Christian roots.  
 
And yet, in choosing the Holy Mass as the heart of its global ceremony, this new ideology paradoxically manifested how the Eucharist is always the reference point of every human endeavour, whether to build up or tear down, to create or overthrow.  Watching on, we all surely witnessed how a modern world that thinks it has long since cast aside the Church and its Gospel cannot ever quite manage to free itself from its coattails.  Yet again, the Holy Mass showed itself not just the source and summit of the Christian life but, even when derided, the stumbling block or stepping stone of any chapter in our human story.    
 
In the following weeks, the Scriptures for our Sunday Masses will take us through the LORD’s teaching on the Eucharist following upon His feeding of the five thousand and will culminate in Peter’s confessions, voicing the stark choice facing all humanity: LORD, to Whom shall we go: You have the message of Eternal Life! (Jn 6:67–69).  Apart from Him humanity can do nothing (Jn 15:5), the LORD Jesus Christ and His Eucharistic Mystery, the only hope of glory for the human race (Col 1:27).  
 
In these coming weeks, as we reflect upon the LORD’s teaching on the Eucharist, I hope our devotion to the Holy Mass and Blessed Sacrament will be renewed and strengthened. And may that devotion include some little acts of reparation—fasting and prayer—to atone for the scorn broadcast to the world during the Olympics Opening Ceremony and to pray for the conversion of those who participated in it so that they, in turn, can find in Christ the lasting satisfaction for which they crave.
 
Yours in Christ,

+ John Keenan
Bishop of Paisley