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Two activists from animal rights group PETA disrupted a public audience with Pope Francis on Wednesday, chanting and holding signs against bullfighting before being ejected from the Paul VI Hall.
They all wore T-shirts reading “Stop blessing bullfighting” and held signs reading “Bullfighting is a sin.” PETA called on the Pope to sever the Catholic Church’s ties with bullfighting and condemn the “vile blood sport.”
Tens of thousands of bulls are slaughtered each year at bullfighting festivals around the world, many dedicated to Catholic saints, according to the group. At these events, attackers on horseback and on foot plunge spears and lances into the bulls, causing severe pain and restricting their movement.
“As many countries wisely ban this sick form of ‘entertainment,’ Pope Francis must condemn this bloody sport and sever the Catholic Church’s shameful ties to bullfighting,” the group said in a recent statement on its website.
The Vatican had no immediate comment on Wednesday’s protest.
British priest Terry Martin recently criticised bullfighting in a campaign with PETA and called on Pope Francis to condemn it.
The priest, from West Sussex, England, posed next to a bull wearing a red chasuble with the words “torturing animals is a sin” written on it.
PETA noted that Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si’ that “all cruelty to any living creature is ‘contrary to human dignity,'” and that Pope St. Pius V had banned bullfighting since the 16th century, deeming it “cruel” and “far removed from Christian piety and charity.”
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