At a Vatican seminar attended by Nobel Peace Prize winners, United Nations officials, and representatives from countries with nuclear capabilities, Pope Francis urged leaders to move towards nuclear disarmament on Friday.
The pontiff’s speech came a week after he made a plea for an end to “useless massacres” in an anti-war speech at a military cemetery in Italy, in which he alluded to the rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, exacerbated in recent months by President Donald Trump’s bellicose threats in response to Kim Jong-un’s nuclear tests.
Pope Francis argued that the insistence on maintaining nuclear arsenals by nations including the United States, North Korea, and France “creates nothing but a false sense of security,” and therefore total disarmament is the only acceptable solution.
Nuclear weapons, he said, “exist in the service of a mentality of fear that affects not only the parties in conflict but the entire human race. International relations cannot be held captive to military force, mutual intimidation, and the parading of stockpiles of arms.”
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