Vatican: Animal Allies Plead for Church to Denounce Bullfights at Easter Mass
20.04.2025
Rome – This morning, two PETA supporters wearing shirts proclaiming, “Bullfighting is a sin” brought a message of compassion to Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican’s Easter Mass. The animal allies unfurled banners and pleaded with the Catholic church to cut ties with cruel bullfighting. Video of the disruption is available here.
“Easter is a time to celebrate life and show mercy, yet today, countless bulls who committed no sins are tortured and killed with the Catholic church’s blessing,” says PETA Vice President for Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “This is the opposite of what Jesus would have wanted, and ours is a heartfelt plea to the church to condemn this disgusting bloodsport and to all kind people to stay far away from bullfights.”
Every year, tens of thousands of bulls are tormented and slaughtered in bullfighting festivals around the world, many of which are held in honour of Catholic saints, including Easter Sunday. During these events, tormentors on horses drive lances into a bull’s back 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 him by plunging a sword into his lungs. If that fails, his spinal cord is cut with a knife. The bull may be paralysed but still conscious as the matador cuts off his ears or tail as a trophy and his body is dragged from the arena.
Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si’, “Every act of cruelty towards any creature is ‘contrary to human dignity’,” and as far back as the 16th 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”. Paragraph #2418 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 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. Some even attack bulls in arenas while dressed in a cassock.
PETA has previously called on Pope Francis to speak out against bullfighting through disruptive actions, as well as letters signed by Catholic priests and celebrities such as Morrissey.
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 PETA UK on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 207 923 6244; [email protected]
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