A video shows Christians on the streets of France protesting against the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games.
False. The footage is old, and was posted online almost two years ago by the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
A video posted to multiple Facebook accounts which claims to show thousands of Christians protesting after the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games actually depicts an entirely separate event.
The caption on one of the posts, which has been viewed more than a thousand times, says it shows Christians “flooding” the streets of France “after the opening ceremony of the 33rd Olympic Games, in Paris” to “denounce” the display.
The video shows thousands of people holding candles while singing.
The opening ceremony for this year’s Olympic Games took place on 26 July 2024 and included a scene featuring drag queens and a transgender model which reportedly provoked outrage among Christian groups, who compared it to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper.
The organisers later apologised for any offence caused, though said they did not intend to mimic the famous scene.
The video shared on Facebook has nothing to do with the Paris Olympics, however, and is actually old footage.
It was posted online nearly two years ago by the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, a Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes, France. Although we’ve not immediately been able to confirm what event was filmed, it’s therefore clearly unrelated to the recent Paris Olympics.
We often see videos being shared with misleading captions in response to high profile events, and have previously checked other such claims about France.
It's important to consider whether what you see is accurate before sharing it online. Our guides to spotting misleading images and videos can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video was posted online almost two years ago and has nothing to do with the Paris Olympics.
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