Vatican officials call for 'solidarity' in nuclear disarmament after the coronavirus pandemic

The current pandemic has highlighted the need for global solidarity to achieve nuclear disarmament, a senior Vatican diplomat said Wednesday.

"COVID-19 demonstrates the urgent need for a globalization of solidarity and greater investment in integral security and new models of global cooperation," Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, head of the diplomatic affairs section of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See at the launch of a book focused on global disarmament.

The coronavirus pandemic, the archbishop said, has offered the world a lesson on the need to "redefine our concept of security".

Security cannot be based on a concept of mutually assured destruction, he said, but must rather be based on "justice, integral human development, respect for fundamental human rights, protection of creation, building trust between peoples, promoting structures educational and health care, dialogue and solidarity ".

"We need to go beyond nuclear deterrence," he said, encouraging nations to focus instead on forward-looking strategies such as promoting peace and security, and to "avoid shortsighted approaches."

Gallagher spoke at an online book event on Wednesday, promoting the brochure "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons - The Vatican Disarmament Conference". The brochure is inspired by the 2017 Vatican conference on disarmament.

Speakers on Wednesday included Archbishop Gallagher and Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the service of integral human development.

"Speaking against the arms race will never be enough," Cardinal Turkson said, pointing to the use of national resources for weapons that could have instead been used for "integral human development" and environmental care.

"We just want to reflect on the catastrophic impact of all of this on our human society and renew the Holy Father's call for a world free of nuclear weapons," Turkson said.

In October, Vatican Archbishop Gabriele Caccia told the UN that the nuclear deterrence theory is immoral.

"If it is immoral to threaten to use nuclear weapons for deterrence, it is even worse to see them as just another tool of war, as some nuclear doctrines propose," he said.

Pope Saint John XXIII's 1963 encyclical Pacem in terris hoped to steer the world away from the "precipice" of the nuclear holocaust, Cardinal Turkson said, and discourage investment in nuclear weapons - something that sadly did not happen with the 'weakening of non-proliferation treaties, he said.

Today, "conventional weapons progressively increase their destructive character," Turkson said.

Meanwhile, in international relations "a climate of fear, mistrust and opposition prevails," he said. Turkson noted a "constant use of aggressive rhetoric" and the continuing development of military doctrines, as well as the threat posed by non-state terrorist groups obtaining and using chemical and biological weapons.

Turkson reiterated the Church's appeal "for a nuclear-free world" and its "commitment to proclaim the Gospel of life proclaimed by Christ".

The Vatican sponsored the event, in collaboration with Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies of the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University Press and the Catholic Peacebuilding Network.