Cardinal Cupich, in Nagasaki, laments atomic bombing, reflects on just-war tradition

August 08, 2025

A day after celebrating Mass in Hiroshima on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago delivered an address in Nagasaki in which he lamented the United States’ use of nuclear weapons.

“The Geneva Conventions and just war theory both maintain that there is a line to be drawn between innocent people and those individuals who are liable to deliberate attack due to their role in a war effort,” he said. “Tragically, the traditional insistence on noncombatant immunity had crumbled during the savagery of World War II.”

“The intellectual challenge a just war presents is not the major problem before those of us who pastor the People of God,” he continued. “As we gather to recall the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we are reminded today that the real problem is finding people who are so committed to moral limits to warfare that acts of intentionally killing innocents is unthinkable and never to be regarded as a regrettable but useful way to shorten a war.”

Cardinal Cupich added:

In other words, the just war tradition must be a resource for the moral formation not only of the military but the general population of a nation. Helping people resist ideas of retribution, hatred, ethnocentrism, and nationalism should be a necessary element in any articulation of the just war tradition.

For the just war tradition to remain a credible moral approach it must be situated within the broader context of an ethic of solidarity which gives priority to peacebuilding. This is what the Catholic Church has sought to do by talking about integral disarmament.

The archbishop of Chicago also called upon the United States to work for nuclear arms reduction.

“The human race must commit itself to the end of the nuclear arms race, for it is a race which none can truly win but countless millions can truly lose,” he said. “As the only nation that has used nuclear weapons in war, and as the nation with a nuclear arsenal that dwarfs that of all others besides Russia, I believe the United States has a special obligation to lead the human family in a different direction.”

He continued:

The U.S. must seek to build an international order that rests upon a non-nuclear foundation. This cannot be done if America adopts a foreign policy of neo-isolationism, which some in the U.S. seem to want. Instead, diplomatic engagement with Russia should place nuclear arms reduction at the top of the agenda. When serious reductions are attained by the two superpowers, the time will arrive to expand the conversation to include the other nuclear armed nations of the world, including China and North Korea.

But the U.S. and Russia must first demonstrate their willingness to fulfill the responsibility they have assumed as the twin nuclear superpowers. Together they have more than 10,500 of the roughly 12,300 nuclear warheads on earth. It is time for people around the world to call for leadership from the two nations with arsenals that threaten the continued sustainability of life on our planet.

 

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Further information:

• Remarks by Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, in Nagasaki (Archdiocese of Chicago)
• Cardinal Cupich, in Hiroshima, contrasts light of Transfiguration and light of atomic bomb (CWN, 8/7/25)