Rejected PETA Billboard Calls on Next Pope to Denounce Bullfights

30.04.2025

Vatican City – Ahead of the Conclave to elect the next Pope, PETA is sending a thoughtful message to remind that Pope Francis’ compassionate legacy should be honoured  by encouraging his successor to speak out against cruel bullfights. The appeal in the form of a billboard, which is part of PETA’s campaign calling on the Catholic Church to cut its ties to bullfighting, was initially rejected as a giant LED screen near the Vatican–  but not ones to take no for an answer when speaking up for animals, PETA will now be displaying that message on 100 pedestrian billboards around Rome and in proximity of the Vatican.

Image is available here. Credit: PETA

“Our hope is that Pope Francis’ successor will honour his message of respect for all by condemning the torture of bulls during unholy bullfights,” says PETA Vice President for Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “We believe Pope Francis would have done it himself, given more time, knowing that the Catholic church should not be tied to the torture of God’s creatures.”

Every year, tens of thousands of bulls are slaughtered in bullfighting festivals around the world, held in honour of Catholic saints. During these events, assailants on horses drive lances into a bull’s back and neck before others plunge banderillas into his back, inflicting acute pain whenever he turns his head and impairing his range of motion. Eventually, when the bull becomes weak from blood loss, a matador appears and attempts to kill the animal by plunging a sword into his lungs. A knife is used to cut his spinal cord. The bull may be paralysed but still conscious as his ears or tail are cut off and presented to the matador as a trophy and his body is dragged from the arena.

Pope Francis, who was chosen as PETA’s Person of the Year a decade ago, wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si’, “Every act of cruelty towards any creature is ‘contrary to human dignity”. As far back as the 16^th century, Pope Pius V – who has since been canonised – banned bullfighting, which he described as “cruel and base spectacles of the devil and not of man” and contrary to “Christian piety and charity”. The doctrine of the Catholic Church clearly states that humans should not “cause animals to suffer or die needlessly”, yet Catholic priests often officiate at religious ceremonies in bullrings and minister to bullfighters in arena chapels- actions that should be unequivocally condemned by the Vatican

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 207 923 6244; [email protected]

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