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The TabletPope's nuclear speech reveals development of Church teaching
10 November 2017 | by Christopher LambFrancis has gone a step further and is keen for the Church to take a more active role internationally in trying to rid the world of nuclear arms.
Pope Francis outright condemnation of nuclear weapons today marks an evolution in the Catholic position on this topic.
While
his predecessors have said nuclear arms should never be used, John Paul
II told the United Nations in 1982 that use of these weapons as a
deterrence was “morally acceptable” on the step towards disarmament.
But
Francis has gone a step further and is keen for the Church to take a
more active role internationally in trying to rid the world of nuclear
arms.
Back in July, the Holy See cast its first ever UN vote in
favour of nuclear disarmament treaty forbidding states to “develop,
test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile
nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
While
the Holy See only has observer status at the UN, on this occasion it
was granted full member rights to vote and before the gathering took
place to negotiate the treaty the Pope wrote to them saying “we must
commit ourselves to a world without nuclear weapons.”
Two
months after the vote Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign
minister equivalent, travelled to the UN in New York to sign and ratify
the treaty making the Holy See first sovereign entities to put its name
to the agreement.
In
his speech at the Vatican disarmament gathering today, the Pope parsed
the “historic vote” at the UN stressing that it “filled a significant
juridical lacuna, inasmuch as chemical weapons, biological weapons,
anti-human mines and cluster bombs are all expressly prohibited by
international conventions.”
He added that it came out of a
“significant alliance between civil society, states, international
organisations, churches, academies and groups of experts.”
The Pope and the Vatican view
the UN as a vital institution in helping to tackle the major
humanitarian crises across the world but would believe it could do far
more. As a way of pushing things forward, Francis is willing for the
Church to “come off the fence” and play a more active role inside the
organisation.
With
tensions between the United States and North Korea mounting, Francis
has warned that a nuclear conflict could destroy a good part of humanity
and therefore it is essential that an international effort is made to
prevent disaster.
Today’s
speech further underlines how Francis’ papacy is firmly rooted within
the Church’s tradition of non-violence as set out by John XXIII who in a
landmark papal encyclical “Pacem in Terris” called for nuclear weapons
to be banned.
This Pope made a passionate appeal for an end to armed conflicts in his 2017 New Year message titled “Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace” while has tried to mediate peaceful resolutions in countries such as Central African Republic, Venezuela and Colombia.
He
has also repeatedly condemned the arms trade and called for the theory
of Just War - the Church’s teaching about whether armed conflict can be
justified - to be re-assessed.
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