PETA UK Activists Jump in Front of Popemobile, Get Arrested Protesting “Blessed” Bullfights
For Immediate Release:
May 8, 2026
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Moments ago, Pope Leo’s celebration in Piazza del Plebiscito, marking the one-year anniversary of his election as Pope, was disrupted by PETA UK supporters wearing unmissable t-shirts reading “Bullfighting is a Sin,” who stopped the Popemobile in its tracks, pleading with His Holiness Pope Leo to cut the Catholic Church’s ties to bullfighting and condemn the vile bloodbath. Bearing signs urging “Pope Leo: Help End Bullfighting”, the animal defenders were dragged away by police.
Video is available here.
“For the last year, PETA has urged Pope Leo to condemn bullfighting. In that time, tens of thousands of bulls have been tortured to death in the name of God—most of them in Spain, the next stop on the Holy Father’s itinerary,” says PETA UK Senior Vice President Mimi Bekhechi. “Glorifying cruelty contradicts the Holy Father’s own warnings about a world increasingly marred by violence. We urge Pope Leo to denounce this bloodshed as offensive to Christian values.”
Every year, tens of thousands of bulls are tormented and slaughtered in bullfighting festivals around the world, many of which are held in honor of Catholic saints. During these events, tormentors on horses drive lances into a bull’s back before others plunge banderillas into his upper 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 or, if that fails, cutting his spinal cord with a knife. The bull may be paralyzed 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 canonized—banned bullfights, 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 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. Some even attack bulls in arenas while dressed in a cassock.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—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.
