Environmental campaigners led by a 12-year-old girl has called on Pope Francis to try vegan for a month and receive $1 million for the charity of his choice.

The Million Dollar Vegan campaign launched across 15 countries and will highlight the impact of animal agriculture. It has the support of a host of celebrities, such as Evanna Lynch, as well as scientists aiming to “help fight climate change with diet change”.

The CEO of the campaign, Matthew Glover, said: “We are launching this deliberately bold, audacious campaign to jolt our world leaders from their complacency.

“For too long they have failed to act on evidence of the damage caused to people and the planet by animal agriculture. Worse, many have defended and subsidised that very industry. But the evidence is now stark and compelling,” Glover added.

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As part of the campaign, a petition has been launched that asks the Pope to try vegan for Lent. If he agrees, the Blue Horizon International Foundation will donate $1 million.

In a letter written to the Pope by 12-year-old animal rights and environmental activist, Genesis Butler, environmentalists made a connection to climate change and pollution to world hunger, the extinction of wildlife and the suffering of farmed animals.

“Farming and slaughtering animals causes a lot of suffering and is also a leading cause of climate change, deforestation and species loss. When we feed animals crops that humans can eat, it is wasteful,” Butler said.

“And with a growing world population, we cannot afford to be wasteful.”

The campaign is capitalising on the Pope’s campaigning for animal rights in the past, including in his 2015 Encyclical Letter, Laudato si’.

“We are thankful that Pope Francis has spoken out on these issues and that is why we are humbly asking him to try vegan for Lent, and set an example of how each of us can align our principles of caring and compassion with our actions,” Glover said.