Japanese Bishops ask world leaders to end nuclear proliferation

(March 17, 2010) An appeal for the total disarmament of nuclear weapons was made this week by two bishops of Japan, to their own country, the United States and other nations. The world needs to move towards peace, not to destruction, said Archbishop Mitsuaki Takami, who leads the Archdiocese of Nagasaki and Bishop Atsumi Misu of Hiroshima. The two Japanese cities were destroyed by the atom bombs during the 2^nd World War . Mankind "has taken steps towards madness, when he abused the progress in science and technology, to build and sell weapons capable of destroying in a moment, hundreds of thousands of lives. It is time that world leaders bravely put a stop to all this, forever banishing nuclear weapons", they said.
The bishops letter notes that currently, there are over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. The bishops hoped that in the Nuclear Security Summit in April and the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in May, that the world leaders will reach an agreement to take a secure step toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, beyond their own interests. "All nations are committed to achieve this goal, even those, who do not possess nuclear weapons. We must build a world in which, human beings can live with love and confidence in others” they said. In this regard, Archbishop Takami has launched a pilgrimage that will take him from his diocese to Guernica in Spain. He will make this journey together with the "Bombed Mary", a wooden statue of the Virgin that survived the bombing of 1945. This will be "virtually united" to Our Lady of Guernica, that too was hit, but also survived the Spanish Civil War.