“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,” said Ingrid Newkirk, Peta’s founder.
Two anti-bullfighting protesters wearing T-shirts wearing “bullfighting is a sin” at the Vatican were taken away on 3 June after interrupting Pope Leo’s popemobile before an audience.
“Thousands of bulls are mercilessly tortured and killed each year during Catholic celebrations,” Peta’s campaign said. “Rather than upholding Christ’s teachings of love and mercy, the Catholic Church is actively supporting these sadistic spectacles.
“As numerous countries are wisely banning this sick form of ‘entertainment’, the Catholic Church must immediately cut its shameful ties with bullfighting.”
Several Spanish Catholic priests subsequently released a video defending bullfighting, comparing it to the sacrifice of Christ, despite the Catechism of the Catholic Church forbidding cruelty to animals.
Pope Pius V condemned bullfighting as “cruel and base spectacles of the devil and not of man” in the 16th century.
The bloodsport subjects the bulls to long, painful deaths: they are repeatedly stabbed with barbed harpoons, before a sword is driven into their lungs and a dagger is used to sever their spinal cord; in some cases, the bull is left paralysed, and sometimes its ears are cut off.
Pope Leo’s procession through Monaco in March was also disrupted by Peta supporters, who threw themselves in front of the popemobile.
The protestors knelt in front of the Pope’s vehicle holding signs saying “Pope Leo: Help End Bullfighting”, until the police arrested them.
In February, Pope Leo was presented with a bullfighter’s cape at the end of his open-air weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square.
Pope Leo is also to visit France in September, where about a thousand bulls are killed in bullfights every year, and in some areas saints’ patronal festivals are celebrated with other traditional sports involving bulls being terrorised before an audience.