Why PETA pushes the pope on bullfighting
Bullfights have historic ties to Catholicism. Animal rights groups want to see that denounced.
Animal rights organization PETA projected an image condemning bullfighting on the facade of the Apostolic Palace Tuesday, in an attempt to encourage Pope Leo XIV to condemn the practice.
Similar organizations have previously made petitions and interrupted papal events in an effort to get the Vatican to make an official statement on the matter.

But the practice remains widespread throughout Spain and Latin America, where it enjoys the support of many bishops.
In some places, “bullfighting chaplains” are even assigned to attend to the spiritual needs of bullfighters and those linked to the industry.
The real question is this: Why do these groups think the pope has anything to do with bullfighting? Why does PETA push the pontiff on the issue? What is going on here?
The Pillar explains
What happened on Tuesday?
Activists from the animal rights organization PETA projected an image of the words “Bullfighting is a sin” onto the Apostolic Palace May 27.
A statement from the organization says the projection is a message to Pope Leo to “cut the Church’s ties to the violent, deadly bullfighting industry.”
“PETA entities are calling on Pope Leo XIV to start off his papacy by doing what we believe Pope Francis would have, and denounce the torture and killing of bulls during Catholic celebrations,” the statement says.
It describes the tradition of bullfighting as a “[slaughter]... 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,” the statement adds.
This is not the first time PETA has used shock tactics to seek a Vatican response on the subject of bullfighting.
In August 2024, two activists interrupted an audience with Pope Francis by jumping over a barrier that separated a seating area from the central corridor of the Paul VI Hall wearing shirts that said “stop blessing bullfights,” and waving banners reading “bullfighting is a sin.”
Ahead of Easter in 2024, PETA plastered stickers with the message “Bullfighting is a sin. Ask your priest to condemn it,” on buses and billboards around Rome.
And in January of that year, two PETA activists interrupted a vespers service presided by Pope Francis for the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.
Wait. The Church’s ties to the bullfighting industry? Do those exist?
The first evidence of something akin to bullfighting is found in 1500 B.C. frescoes in the island of Crete that show people grabbing a bull’s horns and vaulting over the animal. But the modern history of bullfighting starts in the 15th century, when bull-lancing became one of the favorite sports of the Spanish aristocracy.
And actually, since then, Catholicism and bullfighting have been very closely linked in Spain and Latin America. In fact, supporters of bullfighting often insist it is a basically Catholic custom.
And there’s evidence for that idea.
You know the running of the bulls in Pamplona? Well, it’s part of the city’s weeklong celebrations for the feast of Saint Fermin.
There are Masses, processions, devotions in public squares, and a giant saint head parade.
From the locals’ point of view, the main event is actually the bullfight. But before that starts, six bulls to be fought in the afternoon’s corrida are run through the city's streets to the bullring, while participants, dressed in white with red scarves, run ahead of them for half a mile.
In Madrid, the biggest annual bullfighting spectacle in the world happens around the feast of Saint Isidore the Farmer, the city’s patron.
And that’s not all.
Every major bullring in Spain and Latin America has a consecrated chapel, with the Blessed Sacrament reserved and a local priest serving as chaplain.
Many bulls are blessed before the corrida by local priests. And in Spain and some parts of Latin America, many priests have been bullfighters.
But wait, there’s more.
The canonizations of Saint Estanislaus Kotska and Saint Louis Gonzaga in 1726 were celebrated by the Jesuits in Salamanca with a bullfight — the canonization of Saint Teresa of Avila is said to have been celebrated with 30 corridas and the death of over 200 bulls in places where Saint Teresa had founded convents.
Bullfighting was even brought to the Vatican with the Borgia family, and Carnival Monday of 1519 was celebrated with a large bullfight in Saint Peter’s Square, with the presence of Pope Leo X.
Ok, so bullfighting has a historic connection to the Church, and a cultural one. But it’s not like contemporary cardinals are major proponents of bullfighting, right?
Well actually, bullfighting has a major supporter in the College of Cardinals: Cardinal Baltazar Porras, Archbishop emeritus of Caracas.
The cardinal regularly attended bullfighting events in his previous see in Mérida and frequented bullfighting events in the Plaza de Las Ventas in Madrid whenever he visited.
He also celebrated the closing Mass of the 1st International Encounter of Bullfighting Chaplains and Priests, held in Zamora, Spain in April 2024 with 50 priests from Spain, Portugal, Mexico and Venezuela.
“In life, we have to face so many situations that we have to overcome. It is a constant struggle against many forms of death: physical, emotional... and we have to learn to overcome them with grace and elegance, like good bullfighting,” Porras said in his homily.
So, I haven’t seen one. What actually happens in a bullfight?
Bullfighting is a spectacle common to Spain, Portugal, and many Spanish-speaking countries, in which a bull is fought in a bullring (called a plaza de toros in Spanish) by a bullfighter (called a matador in Spanish), which usually ends in the killing of the bull.
The traditional bullfight involves three bullfighters and six bulls, but there is a form of bullfighting called mano a mano (head to head) in which two bullfighters kill three bulls each. Occasionally, some bullfighters attempt a mano a mano in which they kill all six bulls themselves, one by one.
Bulls used in bullfights are not typical cattle, but a specific, more savage breed that is bred in the Iberian peninsula and Latin America for bullfighting. Most fighting bulls weigh between 1,300 and 1,600 pounds.
Bullfights, known in Spanish as corridas, usually last about 20 minutes each. While some people think of them as a sport, fans consider them more like a play, with distinct parts and roles, which remain the same in each performance.
In fact, a bullfight is divided into three acts, called tercios.
First comes the opening capework, in which the bullfighter dodges the bull by using a cape - or capote - to show the features and strength of the bull. This precedes the tercio de varas, in which the picadores lance the bull. Then, the bullfighter performs the quites, which are more graceful passes of the bull with a larger cape.
After that, the second tercio begins, in which the bull is stuck with four or six banderillas - a type of dart used to goad the bull.
Then, the last tercio starts, in which the bullfighter makes more dangerous passes with the capote, and finally kills the bull.
If the bullfighter’s performance was very good, he will receive the bull’s ear as a prize. If his performance was excellent, he will receive both ears, and if it was spectacular, he will also receive the tail. If the bull fought bravely, the crowd can ask for the bull’s dead body to be given a lap around the ring to the applause of the crowd.
At the end, the carcass is dragged from the arena, the meat is sold, given away, or eaten by the community during an ongoing celebration.
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Of course, bullfighting today is controversial because it is the drawn-out killing of a bull, for entertainment.
During the fight, bulls are repeatedly stabbed with lances and barbed sticks, causing pain and blood loss. Critics argue that this deliberate infliction of pain and fear for sport is inherently cruel and violates modern standards of animal welfare and ethical treatment. This has led to the prohibition of bullfighting in some countries and cities.
Supporters of bullfighting defend it as a cultural tradition that has been present throughout all of Spanish history.
They also say that fighting bulls are raised in a more humane way than animals in factory farming, as they roam freely and are well fed throughout their lives — that except for “one bad day” at the end, bulls raised for fighting have some of the best lives that farm animals could hope for.
Proponents argue that bullfighting is less cruel than farmed animals spending their lives in overcrowded conditions and then being sent to a slaughterhouse.
So PETA wants the pope to condemn bullfighting. Has the Church been critical of it in the past?
Yes.
In fact, in 1557 Pope Pius V issued a bull banning bullfighting, under threat of excommunication and denying an ecclesiastical burial to anyone killed during a bullfight.
The pope called bullfighting “cruel and base spectacles of the devil and not of man.”
But King Phillip II didn’t like that at all. He forbade the publication of the bull on bulls in Spain.
And he told the pope that “in matters of belief and questions of faith, the King of Spain kneels before His Divine Majesty and before the Vicar of Christ on earth… [but in temporal matters] the King of Spain informs His Holiness that he is accountable only to His Divine Majesty."
Pius V’s successor, Gregory XIII, mostly lifted the penalty of excommunication — leaving it in place only for clerics who watched or participated in bullfights.
But despite the prohibition – which was never formally abrogated – clerics in Spain continued taking part in bullfighting events, and there is no evidence that penalties were declared against them.
Many Spanish kings in the 18th century tried to ban or limit the practice again to no avail.
Then, on October 23, 1920, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, then-Vatican Secretary of State, wrote a letter to the President of the Animal Protection Society of Toulon, in which he clarified Pope Benedict XV’s position on bullfighting, saying that “human barbarism still entrenches itself behind bullfights, and there is no doubt that the Church continues to condemn these bloody and shameful spectacles, just as it has done in the past."
Supporters of the bullfights claim that the Holy See’s prohibitions weren’t about the bull. Instead, they say, they were about the risks involved in historic bullfighting — which have changed dramatically in recent centuries, they say.
As bullfighting has grown increasingly regulated since the 16th century, deaths have become uncommon.
Today, defenders say there are no greater risks attached to bullfighting than to mountaineering, motor racing, or boxing.
For example, Fr. Tomás Hurtado of the School of Salamanca said in 1651 that “if one attends the bullfights with the perverse intention of seeing injuries and deaths, it would truly be a spectacle not of men, but of devils, but if one attends to see and enjoy the skill of the bullfighters, the speed of the beasts, the gallantry of the horsemen in striking, then it is not a ‘spectacle of devils, but of Spaniards’.”
The priest also said that for bullfighting to be per se evil, “it would be necessary for those who fight the bulls to almost always die, and this is so far from happening that it is rare for anyone to die… and only those who are truly skilled are allowed to participate.”
Another member of the School of Salamanca, Fr. Martín de Azpilicueta, defended bullfighting saying that “if Frenchmen started bullfighting, it would be a mortal sin… but this is certainly not the case for Spaniards, who learn from childhood to fight them, dodge them, and outwit their attacks.”
Still, bullfighting has had its critics within the Spanish Church as well, mainly centered on the wellbeing and unnecessary suffering of bulls.
Bishop Alberto Iniesta Jiménez, then-auxiliary bishop of Madrid, said in a speech in 1981: “I cannot imagine the Lord at a bullfight, enjoying himself while men risk their lives and poor animals are tortured to death...Is it possible that God created animals for this? Can we as Christians—and even as civilized human beings—remain indifferent to a celebration that degrades man so much...because the suffering it causes is absolutely gratuitous and cannot be justified by hunger, fear, or any other reason?”
Catholic critics of bullfighting also quote paragraph 2418 of the Catechism, which says that “It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.”
Despite the controversy, the Church has not formally condemned the practice in modern times. And the appointment of bullfighting chaplains and the celebration of bullfights on feast days continues to this day.
Will Pope Leo condemn bullfighting, like PETA asks?
At The Pillar, we have no idea. And that’s no bull.
Thank you for this fair, detailed report.
Well, I found this very interesting. Thank you.
I’ve never been to a bull fight. In Canada the closest equivalent would be amateur bow/crossbow hunting where a hapless hunter has to track the injured animal to finally kill it (this is a solitary activity of suffering and humiliation for both hunter and hunted). As a cultural outsider I’m generally more sympathetic to arguments against bullfighting. However, the fact that the meat is consumed is an important thing.
I think the way most of us, in industrial/post-industrial societies, eat and consume packaged meat genuinely warps the human heart and mind in relation to our participation in the killing of animals (as mentioned in the article re: inhumane factory farming conditions). Ideally we would have a relationship to all the meat/fish we consume, by raising it, catching it, killing it ourselves. This undergirds the intrinsic violence with a sense of gratitude and an understanding of the ‘exchange’ which is taking place between human and whatever creature involved. This is simply not possible for most people now. The suffering animal and the mechanics of processing are utterly abstract to us when we buy our packaged steaks for the BBQ. Very few, I would wager, give thought to the actual creature who has died in order for people to have a meal. In the case of bullfighting, at least the individuals eating the meat are aware of the beauty and power of the animal they are eating. They have some sort of connection with the bull and the process, by some sort of cultural participation.
A related anicdote: we lived in Portugal for a time, and the first time I went to a farmers’ market I saw all these cute rabbits in cages and I said to my wife how interesting it is that they sell pet rabbits at the farmers’ market… It didn’t take long for the penny to drop.