US bishops, Vatican newspaper welcome nuclear reduction treaty

April 12, 2010

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has welcomed the April 8 signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). According to the US State Department, the treaty “reduce[es] the number of strategic nuclear warheads in our arsenals to levels not seen since the first decade of the nuclear age.” The US Senate and Russian legislature must approve the treaty before it can take effect.

“For decades the Holy See and the USCCB have worked for a world without nuclear weapons,” said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago in an April 8 letter to President Barack Obama. “The horribly destructive capacity of nuclear arms makes them disproportionate and indiscriminate weapons that endanger human life and dignity like no other armaments.”

“Their use as a weapon of war is rejected in Church teaching based on just war norms,” he continued. “Although we cannot anticipate every step on the path humanity must walk, we can point with moral clarity to a destination that moves beyond deterrence to a world free of the nuclear threat.”

An article in L’Osservatore Romano also praised the treaty for “turn[ing] the page definitively on the logic of the Cold War.”

 

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Further information:

• U.S. Bishops Welcome Signing Of New START Treaty, Call For Bipartisan Senate Ratification (USCCB)
• Full text of letter from Cardinal George to President Obama (USCCB)
• Vatican newspaper praises new U.S.-Russian disarmament treaty (CNS)
• New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) (US Department of State)