Pope calls for global nuclear disarmament
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis has issued a fresh call for global disarmament after a top Vatican prelate warned the world was standing “on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust”.
Francis spoke on Friday to participants of a Vatican conference on nuclear disarmament, including several Nobel Peace laureates and Masako Wada, a Nagasaki bomb survivor and anti-nukes campaigner. Officials from the UN, Nato Russia, US, South Korea, Iran were also in attendance.
“International relations cannot be held captive to military force, mutual intimidation and the parading of stockpiles of arms. Weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, create nothing but a false sense of security,” the pontiff said. “If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned,” he added.
Earlier, Cardinal Peter Turkson opened the two-day Vatican conference deploring “the increasing drumbeat of a possible nuclear conflagration and the fact that humanity stands on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust”.
Turkson noted, in a likely reference to North Korea: “We live in a moment of human history when fear about potential global catastrophe has intensified to a point rarely experienced since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
The cardinal said the Vatican hoped to get in touch with Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of efforts to defuse the crisis. “We are exploring the possibilities of speaking to them directly.” – DPA