VATICAN (CNS): The Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has highlighted the absurdity of “pouring valuable resources into the maintenance of weapons of destruction while so many on this planet are struggling to survive,” Monsignor Fredrik Hansen, charge d’affaires at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations (UN) told an August 26 meeting to commemorate and promote the International Day Against Nuclear Tests.
“It is impossible to make a moral case for continued nuclear weapon testing,” Monsignor Hansen said, stressing, “There should never be another nuclear test explosion.”
The UN designated August 29 as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, and Monsignor Hansen used the occasion to call on China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Visiting Hiroshima in November 2019, Pope Francis said that “the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home. The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral,” Monsignor Hansen said that “furthermore, the pope has also underscored the need to ‘reject heightening a climate of fear, mistrust and hostility fomented by nuclear doctrines’.”
Continuing to quote the pope, he noted, “Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation.”
The monsignor said it is “lamentable” that the eight nations had not yet ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which would be the best way to ensure a permanent end to nuclear testing and the damage it causes to the environment and to “the health of people who were near the test sites or were down-wind from the radioactivity released into the atmosphere.”
He said, “Each of the remaining eight states should strongly back up its words in favour of peace by being the first to sign.”
