🇬🇷🏛📹 — On April 16, 2024 AD, the official account of the Paris 2024's Olympic Games published the inauguration video showing a ceremonial event marking the start of the preparations for the France-based event

Such ceremony, as not-very-well-known but held every game, included a Prayer for Ancient Greek Olympian god of Sun, Apollo, and the Main Ancient Greek god, Zeus, held by actresses performing the roles of Ancient Greek priestesses, that read as:

➡️ “Apollo, God of sun, and the idea of light, send your rays and light the sacred torch for the hospitable city of Paris. And you, Zeus, give peace to all peoples on earth and wreath the winners of the Sacred Race.”

➡️ Such a prayer is held during every single edition of the Olympic Games, following the Ancient tradition of offering the games for the gods as an bidding, offer.

➡️ As one might imagine, as expected in current times, this resulted in a controversy, with many Christian netizens accusing the Olympic Committee of trying to "normalize Greek Paganism Again" — which, although it still has practitioners in Greece and a few thousand more of """practitioners""" in Anglophone countries, is, let's face it, an insignificant minority — and caused a new wave of debates of the nature of the Game's organizers

➡️ Such kind of incident reminds the 2004 Olympics controversy, where a similar accusation happened during the Athens Olympics, where waves of debates between Christians, skeptics and Neo-Pagan groups over the supposed true intentions of the Olympic Committee and whether or not it was trying to normalize a revival of Hellenistic paganism

➡️ This week debates got so heated that the views on the original post reached 3 Million, with the official page hidding replies, as netizens debated widely on the most diverse topics possible, from the Positive Christianity of the Third Reich to the attempt of Christianization of Greco-Roman gods by Catholics

The internet, as always, being a wonderful place for banter enthusiasts

🔗 The Olympic Games (@Olympics)