Amid COP27, PETA Asks Pope to Excommunicate Meat-Eating Catholics

For Immediate Release:
November 9, 2022

Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382

After learning that meat is on the menu at COP27—despite the United Nations’ own calls for a global vegan shift to fight the climate catastrophe—this morning PETA’s Christian outreach division, LAMBS (“Least Among My Brothers and Sisters” from Matthew 25:40), sent a letter to Pope Francis I, urging him to reintroduce the tradition of meatless Fridays and to excommunicate any Catholics who eat animals. The group points out that the pope recently decried meat eating as part of a “self-destructive trend” and has called on Catholics to do their part to stop the environmental crisis.

“In the eyes of God, all animals are equally deserving of life, respect, and dignity, yet these things are denied to the billions of pigs, cows, chickens, and other animals who are killed for food worldwide,” writes PETA Foundation Faith Outreach and Engagement Campaign Coordinator Candice Kelsey. “Abstaining from eating flesh would do a world of good for the planet and all its inhabitants, and you could help show the way to a more environmentally sound, humane and ethical way of eating.”

Genesis 1:29 states that God provides “every seed-bearing plant” and “every tree whose fruit contains seed” as food for humans, yet billions of animals are killed for food every year. They endure routine mutilations, such as castration and tail-docking, without pain relief before they experience a violent death in the slaughterhouse. Fish are impaled, crushed, suffocated, or cut open and gutted, often while they’re fully conscious. Each person who eats vegan—and not just on Fridays—spares nearly 200 animals a miserable fate every year.

LAMBS opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. Its motto, a variation of PETA’s, is “Animals are not ours. They’re God’s.” For more information, please visit PETALambs.com or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.