CNA Newsroom, May 19, 2023 / 16:30 pm
Four Catholic bishops from the U.S. and Japan called for G7 leaders to take action against nuclear weapons amid a “more dangerous” arms race and an escalated threat of nuclear war.
“We strongly urge world leaders at the G7 Summit to show by example how international leadership is ready, willing, and able to work with nuclear weapons and nonnuclear weapons states to ensure no country or city ever suffers the horrors of nuclear war again,” said the four bishops in a May 15 letter to G7 leaders.
Signing the letter were Archbishop Paul D. Etienne of Seattle and Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, joined by Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura of Nagasaki and Bishop Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama of Hiroshima.
The two U.S. bishops’ archdioceses have major connections to nuclear weapons. The letter said they are “the spiritual leaders of the diocese with the most spending on nuclear weapons in the United States (Santa Fe, New Mexico), the diocese with the most deployed strategic nuclear weapons in the United States (Seattle), and the only two dioceses in the world to have suffered atomic attacks (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan).”