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Pope calls nuclear weapons ‘perverse’ and ‘immoral’

Poignant speeches by Francis in two cities devastated by atomic bombs in 1945

La Croix International

In Nagasaki and then Hiroshima, Pope Francis once again attacked “the use of atomic energy for military purposes”, calling it “a crime.”

Nagasaki and Hiroshima. What better places to choose than those where two atomic bombs struck humanity in August 1945, and by a pope who has “irrevocably” committed the Church to promoting peace and fighting nuclear weapons?

“This place makes us deeply aware of the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another,” he acknowledged under the pouring rain of Nagasaki, after placing a crown of white flowers and pausing for a long time, right where the bomb exploded and instantly destroyed 40,000 human lives.

“Here, in an incandescent burst of lightning and fire, so many men and women, so many dreams and hopes, disappeared, leaving behind only shadows and silence. In barely an instant, everything was devoured by a black hole of destruction and death,” he added in his meditation delivered in the evening, which by then had already fallen on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

It was an almost poetic text, had it not been preceded by the terrible and icy testimony of two survivors, aged 14 and 17 at the time.

They were two stories of “a terrifying hour that left its mark forever not only on the history of this country, but on the face of humanity” that led Francis to judge that “the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral.”

Nuclear weapons ‘do not defend us’

“A crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home,” he added.

At that point he left his prepared text and declared, as he did two years ago, that even the mere “possession of atomic weapons” is “immoral”.

While his predecessors Paul VI or John Paul II had, despite the concerns of Vatican II, accepted nuclear deterrence in the era of the Cold War, things have since changed. And, in the age of terrorism, Francis again acknowledged in both cities that nuclear weapons “cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security.”

‘True peace is an unarmed peace’

In his Nagasaki message, the pope stressed that “the possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is not the answer to this desire” by humanity for peace. He then denounced the “perverse dichotomy that tries to defend and ensure stability and peace through a false sense of security sustained by a mentality of fear and mistrust, one that ends up poisoning relationships between peoples and obstructing any form of dialogue.”

“Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation,” he said before regretting, without quoting it, this summer’s end of the Russian-American Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

“We are witnessing an erosion of multilateralism, which is all the more serious in light of the growth of new forms of military technology”, Francis warned. He urged nations to “break down the climate of distrust that risks leading to a dismantling of the international arms control framework.”

“A true peace can only be an unarmed peace,” he reminded us at Hiroshima.

Humankind needs ‘mutual trust’

In Nagasaki, he therefore reiterated his support for the “the principal international legal instruments of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, including the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”

Thirty countries, including the Holy See, have signed and ratified the treaty. But that number must reach 50 before the pact can come into effect.

Francis went beyond denouncing the principle of nuclear weapons. He declared that “a world without nuclear weapons is possible and necessary” and pleaded for “a global ethic of solidarity and cooperation.”

“Our response to the threat of nuclear weapons must be joint and concerted, inspired by the arduous yet constant effort to build mutual trust and thus surmount the current climate of distrust,” he stressed.

‘An affront crying out to heaven’

“When we yield to the logic of arms and distance ourselves from the practice of dialogue, we forget to our detriment that, even before causing victims and ruination, weapons can create nightmares”, he added in Hiroshima, denouncing in the words of Paul VI at the United Nations the military's “enormous expenses” which “interrupt projects of solidarity and of useful labor” and “warp the outlook of nations.”

“In a world where millions of children and families live in inhuman conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance and sale of ever more destructive weapons, are an affront crying out to heaven,” he had earlier said in Nagasaki.

“No one can be indifferent to the pain of millions of men and women whose sufferings trouble our consciences today. No one can turn a blind eye to the ruin caused by a culture incapable of dialogue,” he added, at the foot of a pillar, the only vestige of Urakami Cathedral, destroyed by the bomb, but once the largest in the Far East.

’Lord, make me an instrument of your peace’

And because prayer is part of the “the most powerful 'weapons' in which we put our trust,” he concluded his message with the words of Francis of Assisi, the saint whose name he chose to bear: “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.”

It was on a religious level that Francis wanted to place himself yesterday.

In Nagasaki, he took advantage of the Mass of Christ the King, celebrated in the city’s baseball stadium, to immediately defuse the criticism of those who will hasten to explain that these words of the pope on the atomic weapon, which they will judge political and not religious, do not bind Catholics.

“They are sadly mistaken who believe that, because we have here no lasting city and keep our gaze fixed on the future, we can ignore our responsibility for the world in which we live. They fail to see that the very faith we profess obliges us to live and work in a way that points to the noble vocation to which we have been called,” he recalled, quoting Gaudium et spes once again, appearing more than ever as the pope of the implementation of the most radical intuitions of Vatican II.