Sussex Priest Teams Up With PETA for Powerful Message Denouncing Bullfighting in ‘The Tablet’
18 July 2024
Sussex Priest Teams Up With PETA for Powerful Message Denouncing Bullfighting in ‘The Tablet’
Worthing, West Sussex – Fr Terry Martin – a Catholic priest who serves the Parish of Worthing and Lancing – has appeared in a dramatic full-page advert in the leading international Catholic journal, The Tablet, calling out bullfighting for what it is: animal torture. The provocative message is based on a quote from Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 437), and the ad forms part of PETA’s campaign calling on Pope Francis to cut the Church’s ties to the cruel and barbaric practice.
Martin, a longtime vegan, is known for his animal advocacy. Last year, he joined with priests from France and Canada to send a letter to Pope Francis asking him to condemn bullfighting, and in January, he published an op-ed in the Catholic Herald pointing out that terrorising and killing vulnerable animals is contrary to Christ’s teachings of mercy and compassion.
The image is also available here.
“Bullfights are cruel and have no part in legitimate religious celebrations,” writes Martin. “No one, Catholic or otherwise, should support bull torture under any circumstances.”
“The Church teaches compassion for all living beings, yet it’s complicit in the ritual torment and killing of persecuted bulls,” says PETA Vice President for UK and Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA is calling on Pope Francis to condemn these vile spectacles, and we urge merciful people everywhere to stay far away from bullrings.”
Every year, tens of thousands of bulls are slaughtered in bullfighting festivals around the world, many of which are held in honour 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 or, if that fails, cutting his spinal cord with a knife. The bull may be paralysed but 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.
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 canonised – banned bullfights, which he described as “cruel and base spectacles of the devil and not of man” and contrary to “Christian piety and charity”. The doctrine of the Catholic Church clearly states that humans should not “cause animals to suffer or die needlessly”, yet Catholic priests often officiate at religious ceremonies in bullrings and minister to bullfighters in arena chapels. Some even attack bulls in arenas while dressed in a cassock. In April, the diocese of Zamora, Spain, collaborated with the International Bullfighting Association to host a meeting to promote the relationship between the Church and the bullfighting industry, which was attended by Catholic priests from all over the world, including Venezuelan Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo, a friend of Pope Francis.
Martin’s book, Animals in Heaven? A Catholic Pastoral Response to Questions About Animals, is due to be published by Wipf and Stock later this year.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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