Eighty years ago, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people. Despite the terrible lesson of lives lost, tremendous destruction and chronic suffering and illnesses for survivors, the world is now dangerously close to a nuclear precipice.
During the past year, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states, faced off in territorial disputes. In the Middle East, Israel and the United States in June attacked Iran over its accelerated nuclear program.
Since 2023, the United States and Russia have elected to end data sharing of their deployed warheads and launchers as mandated by their New START Treaty. That treaty — the only remaining nuclear treaty between the two largest nuclear-armed states — is set to expire in February 2026, and no replacement treaty has materialized.
In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists acknowledged the gravity of the situation by moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight it has ever been.
The Elders, a group of global leaders working for peace and justice that was founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, noted a heightened risk of “nuclear catastrophe” in a May statement titled “No More Hiroshimas.” The statement stresses, however, that “war and nuclear confrontation are not inevitable.” There is still an opportunity to reverse course.
President Trump has signaled his willingness to negotiate with Putin. And faith groups, including the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, have written to the White House to urge nuclear negotiations, referencing President Trump’s own statements. In the U.S. Congress, a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, H. Res. 317, similarly asks the executive branch to “lead the world back from the brink of nuclear war.”
The de-escalation of nuclear risks is not a partisan issue. It is a moral one.
Pope Saint John XXIII made the Catholic position on nuclear disarmament explicit as early as 1963 in his encyclical Pacem In Terris (Peace on Earth): “Nuclear weapons must be banned. A general agreement must be reached on a suitable disarmament program, with an effective system of mutual control.”
The late Pope Francis was a champion of disarmament. Visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the 2019 anniversaries of the bombings, he preached from the pulpit, “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral. … How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?”
Pope Francis promoted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a United Nations treaty that aims to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and the Holy See was among the first states to sign and ratify it. The United States has not signed the TPNW and has voted against U.N. resolutions supporting it. None of the countries possessing nuclear weapons have ratified the treaty.
Until nuclear-armed nations realize that assured mutual destruction is not a means of deterrence but rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, life on Earth will hang in the balance.
Featured image: A girl releases paper lanterns on the Motoyasu River to commemorate the World War II atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. (CNS/Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters/Japan)
FAITH IN ACTION:
• Read the faith letter to President Trump to ask for nuclear negotiations.
https://mogc.me/ifl-5-15
• Write to your Representatives in Congress asking for their support of H. Res. 317 https://mogc.me/HRes317
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www.maryknollogc.org or email ogc@maryknollogc.org.
