As the world marks the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6-8, we acknowledge the religious, political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural state of the nuclear weapon era in our world community and pray for the end of this scourge:
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This week features a religious dialogue between Japanese bishops and United States pilgrims (including Archbishop Paul D. Etienne of Seattle; Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe; Anne Avellone, Director, Social Justice and Respect Life, Archdiocese of Santa Fe; Jay Coghlan, Executive Director, Nuclear Watch New Mexico; Hirokazu Miyazaki, the Kay Davis Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University; and Jim Thomas, Nuclear Disarmament Specialist)
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Upcoming budget negotiations in the United States Congress will likely include a vote about whether to fund the development of a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile and its associated warhead.
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In July, “Oppenheimer,” this summer’s motion picture of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb, made $82.4 million dollars in its opening weekend.
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Last month, nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula continued to build. North Korea tested its most advanced solid-fueled ICBM that gives it the capability to strike the United States at short notice and in a show of force in the past day. Also in July, a US nuclear-armed submarine visited South Korea for the first time since the 1980s.
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Earlier this summer, Russian President Vladimir reportedly positioned nuclear weapons in Belarus, as part of his country’s war strategy against Ukraine.
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In 2022 alone, the nine nuclear weapons-possessing countries spent over $80 billion on maintaining and modernizing their nuclear weapon arsenals.
Let us pray:
One of the deepest longings of the human heart is for security, peace and stability. The possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is not the answer to this desire; indeed they seem always to thwart it. Our world is marked by a 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. They can be achieved only on the basis of a global ethic of solidarity and cooperation in the service of a future shaped by interdependence and shared responsibility in the whole human family of today and tomorrow.
The arms race wastes precious resources that could be better used to benefit the integral development of peoples and to protect the natural environment. In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane 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.
A world of peace, free from nuclear weapons, is the aspiration of millions of men and women everywhere. To make this ideal a reality calls for involvement on the part of all: individuals, religious communities and civil society, countries that possess nuclear weapons and those that do not, the military and private sectors, and international organizations.
(The prayer above is adopted from Pope Francis’ Nov. 24, 2019 address on nuclear weapons at the Atomic Bomb Hypocenter Park, Nagasaki, Japan.)
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