• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
    • Allies
    • Board of Directors
    • Guiding Principles
    • Member Organizations
    • Mission & History
  • Membership
  • Request a Speaker
  • Volunteer
  • Contact Us
  • Contribute

The Colorado Coalition

Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

Click Here to Contribute

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • Events
  • Take Action
  • News
  • Perspective
  • Subscribe

Pope Frances Calls for Nuclear Abolition!!

November 25, 2019 By Bob Kinsey

Pope Francis called for the global abolition of nuclear weapons while paying homage to the victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those two cities were both destroyed by atomic weapons designed and produced by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, located in northern New Mexico’s Santa Fe Catholic Archdiocese.

The Holy Father declared:
“With deep conviction I wish once more to declare that the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home. The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as I already said two years ago. We will be judged on this. Future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth. How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?”

Two of the U.S.’ three nuclear weapons laboratories, the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, are located within the Santa Fe Catholic Archdiocese. Together the two labs spend $4 billion per year on core nuclear weapons design, testing and production programs. In addition, up to 2,500 nuclear weapons are estimated to be held in strategic reserve at the Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex, less than two miles south of the Albuquerque International Airport. That complex is probably the largest repository of intact nuclear weapons in the country and perhaps the world.

The Los Alamos Lab is preparing to quadruple the production of plutonium pits, the fissile cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. The federal government has declared that expanded plutonium pit production is its highest priority for its $1.7 trillion “modernization” plan. That plan will completely rebuild the nuclear weapons stockpile with new military capabilities, construct new bomb production plants expected to be operational until ~2080, and build new missiles, subs and bombers to deliver these improved nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

The reputation of the Santa Fe Archdiocese was heavily damaged during the Catholic Church’s chronic sexual abuse scandal. In fact, that global scandal actually started in the Santa Fe Archdiocese when it became publicly known in the mid-1980’s that it was the dumping ground for pedophile priests from across the country. In June 2019 the Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy, following dozens of lawsuits and an announcement by the New Mexico Attorney General that it would investigate the Church’s handling of clergy misconduct.

As the Archdiocese with the likely largest presence of nuclear weapons in the country (if not the world), it now has an opportunity to redeem its moral high ground by following Pope Francis’s plea for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. Catholicism is by far the largest religion in New Mexico, with ~30% of the state’s population. Any call by the Archdiocese to follow the Pope’s directive to abolish nuclear weapons could have a powerful effect on the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories’ ~24,000 employees.

Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico Director, commented:
“I call on the Santa Fe Archbishop to not only heed the words of Pope Francis in Nagasaki, but to actively preach to his congregants that the continuing possession and so-called modernization of nuclear weapons is immoral. As the Pope said, “Future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth.” I respectfully suggest that Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester should act accordingly.”
# # #
The text of Pope France’s speech is available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20191124_messaggio-incontropace-hiroshima.html

Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 903 W. Alameda #325, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Please make checks out to “SRIC”, our fiscal agent. You can also donate online using the button below. All donations are fully tax deductible.

Filed Under: News, Perspective

About Bob Kinsey

Primary Sidebar

Disarmament Quotes

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth BainbridgeDeputy Director Manhatten Project

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlisterKings Bay Protestor 2019

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight EisenhowerUS President 1953-1961

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford"The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee ButlerFormer Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

Copyright © 2025 The Colorado Coalition


A Website by Arielle Elak Design