Archbishop Desmond Tutu Calls for Justice for Animals

Nobel Peace Prize winner and renowned human rights advocate Archbishop Desmond Tutu  recently took a strong stance on protecting animals, saying, “The matter of the abuse and cruelty we inflict on other animals has to fight for our attention in what sometimes seems an already overfull moral agenda. It is vital, however, that these instances of injustice not be overlooked.”

He continued, “I have seen firsthand how injustice gets overlooked when the victims are powerless or vulnerable, when they have no one to speak up for them and no means of representing themselves to a higher authority. Animals are in precisely that position. Unless we are mindful of their interests and speak out loudly on their behalf, abuse and cruelty go unchallenged. It is a kind of theological folly to suppose that God has made the entire world just for human beings, or to suppose that God is interested in only one of the millions of species that inhabit God’s good earth.”

The Rev. Tutu joins other respected voices calling for kindness and compassion, including Nelson Mandela and Pope Francis.

You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to make a difference. Every day, every one of us can make choices that help animals.