RELIGION & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Brigitte Bardot “was the picture
of elegance,” for a September 27 audience
with Pope Jean Paul II, a day before her
61st birthday, Reuter correspondent Jude
Webber reported, “clad in a tight brown
trouser suit, low-cut pink top, wearing flowers
in her upswept long hair.” Said Bardot
after visiting the Pope, “We talked of animals,
of course. He told us he thought of
them, and they need our help.” Bardot quit
her film career in 1973 to devote herself to
animal protection.
Monsoon floods inundated the
temple at Pathum Thani, Thailand, in
early October, revealing to newspaper
photographers an elephant named
D i a m o n d whom abbot Pra Kru Udom
Pawana-pirat has kept chained to a tree for
nearly 20 years to attract worshippers. The
temple sells the visitors food to give
Diamond––but he rarely gets enough.
Diamond “is skinny, bony, and not healthy,
especially mentally,” said Friends of the
Asian Elephants Foundation representative
Leutchai Kladsri, who tried unsuccessfully to
buy him. Objected Pawana-pirat, “I never torture
him.”
Radio “sex doctor” Ruth
Westheimer read from a prayer book in
Brooklyn on October 3 while a friend swung a
live chicken over his head in a Hassidic Yom
Kippur rite called “shlug kaporos.” After the
swinging, the chickens are killed according to
kosher law and given to the poor.
Faith healers caught a male and
female crocodile on September 30 in
Yaounde, capital of Cameroon; dressed the
male in a fake beard and pants; painted the
female’s claws with red nail polish; and
burned both alive as “bewitched.”