TO THE EDITOR:
The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force on January 22, 2021, upon its receiving ratification by 50 states. When the treaty first opened for signature on September 20, 2017, the Holy See was the first to both sign and deposit its ratification. The Holy See has continued to heed the Vatican’s call to “work with determination to promote the conditions necessary for a world without nuclear arms,” with a special focus on the following dates: Aug. 6, 2021 (the anniversary of Hiroshima); Sept. 21, 2021 (the International Day of Peace); and Sept. 26, 2021 (the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons). Several groups have envisioned vigils for Aug. 6, 2021, in order to “keep alive the flame of collective conscience, bearing witness to succeeding generations to the horror of what happened,” because that witness “awakens and preserves the memory of the victim, so that the conscience of humanity may rise up in the face of every desire for dominance and destruction,” Message for the 2020 World Day of Peace (12/18/19).
As stated in “Frateli Tutti, we must “learn how to cultivate a penitential memory.” I ask that your readers consider reviewing the Holy Father’s address on Nuclear Weapons, which he delivered in Japan in November 2019, 74 years after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In his address Pope Francis said, “The arms race wastes precious resources that could be better used to promote the integral development of peoples and to protect the natural environment. In a world where millions of children and families live in inhuman conditions, the money 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.”
Claudia M. Arroyave, Pax Christi Rhode Island
Member of Saint Gregory and Assumption Parishes
