Photo Op: Giant PETA ‘Bulls’ to Crash St. Peter’s Over Catholic Church’s Ties to Bullfighting

For Immediate Release:
October 2, 2025

Contact:
Alex Payne 202-483-7382

“Bull blessings, not bullfights!” That’s the message PETA supporters will bring to St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Sunday, along with a pair of massive inflatable bulls, when they protest outside the Blessing of the Animals service held in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. The animal advocates are urging parishioners in Pope Leo XIV’s hometown to pressure the pontiff to denounce violent and deadly bullfights.

“While Catholics around the world honor St. Francis’ love for all living, feeling beings, bulls are terrorized, maimed, and subjected to a violent, agonizing death with the Church’s blessing,” says PETA Faith Outreach Coordinator Sarah McFarlane, a Catholic.  “PETA is calling on Pope Leo XIV to denounce these disgusting spectacles and for priests to take a stand against the barbaric ritualized slaughter of God’s creation.”

Where: Outside St Peter’s Catholic Church, 110 W. Madison Street, Chicago

When: Sunday, October 5, 12:30 p.m.

Interviews will be available on-site and remotely.

Why: Every year, tens of thousands of bulls are slaughtered in bullfighting festivals held in honor 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. Eventually, when the bull becomes weak from blood loss, a matador plunges a sword into his lungs. A knife is used to cut his spinal cord. The bull may be paralyzed 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 16th century, Pope Pius V—who has since been canonized—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 banned by the Vatican.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.