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 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.