Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, joined by Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle, visited Hiroshima on August 6, the anniversary of the dropping of atomic bomb there in 1945.
The survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “continue to provide the world with their painful testament for the needed abolition of nuclear weapons,” said Archbishop Wester.
“It is not enough that we become instruments of peace, as important as that is,” he added. “No, we must take up the cause of worldwide nuclear disarmament with an urgency that befits the seriousness of this cause and the dangerous threat that looms over all of humanity and the planet.”
In 2022, Archbishop Wester said that his archdiocese has “a special responsibility” to “help lead humanity toward nuclear weapons abolition,” as “more money is spent on nuclear weapons research and production in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe than any other diocese in the country because of the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.”