{"id":56669,"date":"2015-04-20T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=56669"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:51","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:51","slug":"pope-francis-latest-mission-stopping-nuclear-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/04\/pope-francis-latest-mission-stopping-nuclear-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis\u2019 Latest Mission: Stopping Nuclear Weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. State Department Is Revving Up Its Efforts to Work with the Holy See<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Pope<\/a>

Pope Francis at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, Vatican, on April 9, 2015.
Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

April 10, 2015 – <\/em>The Vatican has long opposed nuclear weapons, but Pope Francis is making the cause one of the top diplomatic priorities of his two-year-old papacy.<\/p>\n

In December, the Vatican submitted a paper calling for total nuclear disarmament to the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. In January, Pope Francis touted nuclear disarmament as a major goal alongside climate change in his speech to the Vatican\u2019s diplomatic corps. And on Easter Sunday, he publicly prayed that the prospective multi-nation deal to halt Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program would be \u201ca definitive step toward a more secure and fraternal world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many observers expect the Pope to raise the topic in his speech to the United Nations in September, especially as that event also commemorates the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI\u2019s historic U.N. speech calling for \u201cnever again war, never again war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPope Francis has recently pushed the moral argument against nuclear weapons to a new level, not only against their use but also against their possession,\u201d Archbishop Bernedito Auza, the Holy See\u2019s Ambassador to the U.N., says. \u201cToday there is no more argument, not even the argument of deterrence used during the Cold War, that could \u2018minimally morally justify\u2019 the possession of nuclear weapons. The \u2018peace of a sort\u2019 that is supposed to justify nuclear deterrence is specious and illusory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vatican push on nuclear weapons comes as the United States is in the final stages of negotiating a deal with Iran and as 190 parties that have supported the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty prepare for its five-year review. The upcoming NPT RevCon, as the U.N. treaty review conference is called, is the first NPT review during the Francis papacy, and Francis\u2019 voice is already adding moral and political weight to the conversation. The Holy See, a party to the Treaty, has opposed the possession and use of nuclear weapons since the beginning of the nuclear age.<\/p>\n

The Holy See is \u201cvery concerned,\u201d Auza adds, about nuclear-capable states\u2019 commitment to disarmament, arguing that the central promise of the treaty remains unfulfilled. \u201cThe fact that nuclear-possessing States not only have not dismantled their nuclear arsenals but are modernizing them lies at the heart of nuclear proliferation,\u201d he says. \u201cIt perpetuates the \u2018injustice\u2019 in the NPT regime, which was supposed to be temporary while nuclear disarmament was in progress\u2026. how could we reasonably convince the pre-NPT non-nuclear countries not to acquire or develop nuclear arms capabilities? Now, the real and present danger that non-state actors, like terrorist and extremist organizations, could acquire nuclear weapons \u2018in the black market\u2019 and \u2018not-so-black market,\u2019 \u2018in the back alleys\u2019 and \u2018not-so-back alleys\u2019 should terrify us all.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday [9 Apr 2015], two events on opposite sides of the planet signaled Pope Francis\u2019 diplomatic reach ahead of the NPT review. In New York at the United Nations\u2019 headquarters, the Holy See\u2019s Mission to the U.N. and the Global Security Institute hosted a conference of diplomats and interfaith partners to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons. At the Vatican, a United States diplomatic delegation was courting Catholic Church leaders on President Obama\u2019s commitment to nuclear disarmament.<\/p>\n

Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller has picked up on the Vatican\u2019s keen interest in nuclear disarmament and has made it a priority to engage the Holy See. Gottemoeller first visited the Vatican in January to discuss arms control and nonproliferation issues with several counterparts. In late March, the State Department invited the Holy See to participate as an observer in its new disarmament verification initiative, the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification. This week, Gottemoeller returned to the Vatican with Madelyn Creedon, the Department of Energy\u2019s principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, for a two-day diplomatic visit.<\/p>\n

Gottemoeller\u2019s efforts have centered on briefing the Vatican on the United States\u2019 disarmament agenda. She has been working to reach highest-level counterparts, as well as technical experts and non-governmental experts. \u201cPresident Obama from the very beginning of his term in office has been very clear that his goal is to proceed with nuclear disarmament,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople think sometimes that that is just a kind of propaganda slogan out there without a lot of \u2018there\u2019 there, so I wanted to make sure that our Vatican counterparts knew the degree to which the President\u2019s Prague initiative has become substantively a very significant part of our national policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States knows the political capital Pope Francis holds when it comes to national and international decision-making. Most notably, the White House credited Francis for his role in brokering the U.S.-Cuba deal in December. \u201cI think there is a huge moral impact of the Vatican on issues that relate to nuclear weapons deterrence and the disarmament agenda overall,\u201d Gottemoeller says. \u201cI see it is as a confluence of interest in a very positive sense. \u2026 You can\u2019t just wave a magic wand and make nuclear weapons go away. It takes hard work and it takes a lot of very practical steps, but we can get there, and that is the President\u2019s message. I just hope that we will be met by patience from the community trying to work on these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Francis, nuclear disarmament\u2014like most everything\u2014must be viewed from the position of the poor instead of the position of the powerful. Inequality and nuclear power are interwoven. \u201cSpending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations,\u201d Pope Francis wrote to the Vienna Humanitarian Conference in December. \u201cTo prioritize such spending is a mistake and a misallocation of resources which would be far better invested in the areas of integral human development, education, health and the fight against extreme poverty. When these resources are squandered, the poor and the weak living on the margins of society pay the price.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has also been deepening its theological and political attention to disarmament. Bishop Oscar Cant\u00fa of Las Cruces, New Mexico, chairman of the USCCB\u2019s Committee on International Justice and Peace, spoke at the Holy See\u2019s U.N. panel. During the NPT RevCon, the USCCB plans to sponsor an event with the Kroc Institute on evolving Catholic perspectives from nuclear deterrence to disarmament. Stephen Colecchi, director of the USCCB\u2019s Office of International Justice and Peace, says that the USCCB is trying to move the Holy See\u2019s moral discussion forward in the U.S.\u2014the USCCB had a close relationship with the Administration during the time of the New START Treaty, and has continued the dialogue with Gottemoeller, who is Catholic. \u201cWe certainly urge the United States to work with Russia and we have been urging them to separate the issue of the day, which is Ukraine, from the issue of the decades, which is nuclear disarmament,\u201d Colecchi says. \u201cDeterrence is even less stable in a multipolar world. We might ask, Are nations, including our own, serious about nuclear disarmament if they are modernizing nuclear weapons systems?\u201d<\/p>\n

After a period of denuclearization in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, several states in the developing world went nuclear and events recently have further undermined the NPT. U.N. Ambassador Libran Cabactulan of the Philippines\u2014who was the president of the previous NPT RevCon\u2014flew in from Manila to speak at the Holy See\u2019s event at the U.N. on Thursday. \u201cNothing has been achieved. Nothing much,\u201d Cabactulan told the U.N. gathering, describing the progress of disarmament in the last five years. \u201cWhat perhaps I achieved, that was calling more on temporal power, and maybe I failed, because in the order of things it\u2019s the tally sheet, what has been done. And that is why I am gratified\u2026to have spiritual leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambassador Antonio Patriota, permanent representative of Brazil to the United Nations, believes that Francis\u2019 position will resonate during the NPT review conference. \u201cHe himself coming from South America, we feel that he has a very deep understanding of the challenges posed by inequality,\u201d Patriota says. \u201cHis words carry quite a bit of political weight. It is a powerful message from man of high moral standing in a time when leadership is scarce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 time.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 10, 2015 – The Vatican has long opposed nuclear weapons, but Pope Francis is making the cause one of the top diplomatic priorities of his two-year-old papacy. The U.S. State Department is revving up its efforts to work with the Holy See.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}