Pope Requests World Leaders to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Pope Francis has appealed to the world leaders to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again, after visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities that are being hit by atomic bombs.

Pope who is on a trip to Japan has Nuclear disarmament as a key agenda for talks. Japan is the country that is not only haunted by the memories of the two major attacks that ended World War II but at the same time also alarmed by the nuclear program and missile tests by North Korea.

Pope Francis during his speech to the dignitaries that includes Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, “(I) invite all persons of goodwill to encourage and promote every necessary means of dissuasion so that the destruction generated by atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never take place again in human history.”

Prime Minister Abe ensured that Japan is committed to a world free of nuclear weapons. In an apparent reference to the tensions in the Korean peninsula caused by North Korea, Pope Francis said dialogue is “the only weapon worthy of the man and capable of ensuring lasting peace.”

Since US President Donald Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this year, Pyongyang has conducted seven more missile tests, one of North Korea’s top nuclear negotiators said.

In his speech, Pope Francis has backed a UN treaty, which is aimed to ban nuclear weapons saying even their possession for the purpose of deterrence, is immoral.

Pope also met Japan’s emperor Naruhito and the topic of their discussion was also nuclear devastation. As Pope Francis had told Naruhito that he remembers as a nine-year-old boy in Argentina, he saw his parents crying on hearing of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that is how it had left a lasting impression on him.

Pope Francis, who turning 83 years by next month, also expressed concern about future energy sources as he comforted victims of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.

More than 18,000 people died or remain missing, after a massive earthquake that took the shape of the tsunami in the year 2004, in some places the waves were 30 meters high that destroyed a wide swath of Japan’s northeastern coast thereby triggering a nuclear meltdown at the plant.

Pope Francis, who has also been outspoken in his opposition to the death penalty, is still in practice in Japan. He will end his four-day trip to Japan on Tuesday.