PETA VP Abused by Priest as a Boy Asks Church to End Its Ties to Bullfighting Cruelty
For Immediate Release:
January 5, 2026
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
A clergy abuse victim addresses the Roman Catholic Church’s ties to the cruel act of bullfighting in a new PETA video released today, urging viewers to ask Pope Leo XIV to acknowledge all forms of abuse of innocents and sever those ties. In the video, Daniel Paden, a Catholic who works to combat cruelty to animals at PETA, speaks about being sexually abused by a priest and points out that—despite Church doctrine stating that humans should not “cause animals to suffer or die needlessly”—priests actively and publicly support bullfighting. In these events, animals are mercilessly tormented before being violently killed, often in festivals held in honor of saints.
“I still wonder how one who preached compassion took pleasure in cruelty. I see that same contradiction in priests who bless or defend bullfighting,” Paden says in the video. “Christ calls on us to protect the powerless. His Church must side with victims of abuse in all its forms.”
Pope Leo’s predecessor, 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 bullfighting, which he described as “cruel and base spectacles of the devil” and contrary to “Christian piety and charity.”
Every year, tens of thousands of bulls are painfully slaughtered in a ritual in which an assailant on horseback drives a lance into a bull’s back and neck before others plunge daggers (banderillas) into his back. When blood loss renders the bull too weak to stand, a matador attempts to kill him by plunging a sword into his lungs. The bull is often 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.
Catholic priests often officiate at religious ceremonies in bullrings and minister to bullfighters in arena chapels. Some even “fight” bulls in arenas while dressed in a cassock.
PETA’s spot will run in Chicago, where Pope Leo is from.
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.
