Source: US News & World Report
“Pope Leo on Wednesday criticised the ‘illusory security’ of the global nuclear deterrence system, in an appeal on the 80th anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, said in his weekly audience that the destruction in Hiroshima, which killed about 78,000 people instantly, should serve ‘as a universal warning against the devastation caused … by nuclear weapons.’ … While the Catholic Church for decades gave tacit acceptance to the system of nuclear deterrence that developed in the Cold War, Leo’s predecessor Pope Francis changed the Church’s teaching to condemn the possession of nuclear arms.” (08/06/25)