PETA Urges New Pope Leo XIV to Honor Pope Francis, End Church Support for Bloody Bullfights
For Immediate Release:
May 8, 2025
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
In response to the Conclave electing Cardinal Robert Prevost to be Pope, PETA has rushed him a letter respectfully requesting that he pay homage to Pope Francis’ (the name chosen in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals) compassionate legacy by cutting the Catholic Church’s ties to violent, deadly bullfighting. The appeal follows PETA’s “Don’t Let His Legacy Go Up in Smoke” campaign, which was displayed on 100 pedestrian billboards around Rome and the Vatican.
“We pray that you will find it in your heart to follow Pope Francis’ compassionate legacy by doing what he surely would have done had he had more time on Earth, and cut the Catholic Church’s sacrilegious ties to the torture killing of bulls for entertainment,” writes PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “In predominantly Catholic countries, this hideously cruel blood sport … survives in part because the Church permits its promoters to use the Church’s and the saints’ names.”
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, 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 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 condemned by the Vatican
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.
