Vatican foreign minister urges nuclear powers to ratify Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
September 30, 2025
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CWN Editor's Note: Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, appealed to the United States, Russia, China, and the six other “Annex 2” nations to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which cannot enter into force until these nations ratify it. (The other Annex 2 nations are Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan.)
“The Holy See’s consistent position is that peace cannot be secured through mutual fear or the logic of deterrence,” Archbishop Gallagher said at a September 26 UN meeting. “History has shown that even nuclear tests can have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences, which are not limited to the affected area.”
Archbishop Gallagher also warned that “the continuous expansion and modernization of nuclear arsenals, accompanied by increasingly belligerent rhetoric and threats concerning their deployment, perpetuate the dangerous illusion that security can be achieved through the threat of annihilation.”
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