Catholic peace group alerts that in its current form new funding instrument “risks fuelling conflict and human rights abuses around the world”
“This is not an abstract idea”, says member of Vatican COVID Commission Alessio Pecorario: “War is something real and our responsibility is to limit it”
Ahead of the World Day of the Poor Sunday, Rome sounds alarm on “ever-increasing number of families who find themselves in objective difficulty” due to coronavirus crisis
“We are all responsible” for the “disgrace” it is that so many of our brothers and sisters are going without food, denounces Francis
“When I do an action regarding nuclear weapons, it relates to poverty, to contamination, to climate disaster, to all of it”, declared the nun, who was arrested multiple times and spent years in prison for her protests
A delegation of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development represented Prefect Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson at a webinar entitled “Post-COVID Multilateral Cooperation: A Nuclear Weapons Free World?”.
A statement by the head of the Caritas Switzerland development policy department revealed that Swiss weapons are being used in the Yemeni war and seem to have fuelled the latent conflict between India and Pakistan.
“It is impossible to make a moral case for continued nuclear weapon testing”, the Holy See has pleaded at the United Nations.
At a press conference today on “Preparing the future, building peace in the time of COVID-19”, Vatican officials proposed as a way of guaranteeing the coronavirus economic and social recovery that the world leave aside an arms race and reduce military spending to instead “‘race’ towards food, health and work security”.
The Justice and Peace Commission of the Swiss Bishops’ Conference (CES) opposes the expansion of arms exports from Switzerland.
A Vatican official has urged the world “to press the reset button” on the system post-COVID and to forge “a new path”.
In a joint statement, the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the European Bishop’s Conference (COMECE) have offered prayers and called for peaceful dialogue ahead of a US–Russia nuclear arms control meeting scheduled for 22 June.
“Time devoted to prayer can never become an alibi for neglecting our neighbour in need”, Pope Francis has clamoured in his message, presented today, for the Fourth World Day of the Poor November 15.
Pax Christi has urged the world to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with the “the two hands of nonviolence” and say “‘no’ to the false security of weapons and ‘Yes’ to human dignity”.
In an online address to the 73rd World Health Assembly, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič, the Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the UN in Geneva, has reiterated the Vatican’s “strong support” for a COVID-19 global ceasefire and the easing of international sanctions amid the pandemic.
The Vatican is pleading with governments to divert weapons spending to ensure food security for the 800 million chronically hungry people in the world.
Catholic peace group Pax Christi has warned the world is “at a tipping point” in the effort to reduce the threat of nuclear war and eliminate nuclear weapons.
In a special prayer for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis has expressed his hope that the “enormous funds” spent on arms around the world may instead be spent “on promoting effective research” to prevent “tragedies” like the coronavirus from occurring in the future.
In his Easter blessing Sunday, Pope Francis urged the world to “ban for ever… indifference, self-centredness, division and forgetfulness”, adding that, faced with the threat of the coronavirus, “the whole world is suffering and needs to be united” in tackling the pandemic.
“Let us silence the cries of death, no more wars!”, Pope Francis cried Saturday at the Easter Vigil, pleading with the world: “May we stop the production and trade of weapons, since we need bread, not guns”.
As the conflict in Yemen entered its sixth year last week, human rights, peace and humanitarian groups from 10 European countries launched an online protest against those fuelling the war.
In the face of the coronavirus outbreak, “now we realise that we don’t have enough masks but there are more than enough bullets”, a Vatican cardinal has deplored.
Italian Catholic groups and NGOs have called on the country’s Prime Minister to explain why the arms industry has been allowed to continue on producing amid the coronavirus shutdown.
“To extend the moratorium on the export of weapons used in the conflict against Yemen” is the request made in a new statement by the German branch of international Catholic Christian peace movement Pax Christi.
In an address February 14 to the 5th Geneva Interfaith Dialogue on the theme “Loving one’s Neighbor”, the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN and Other International Organizations in Geneva, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič, decried the $1.8 trillion the world spent on arms in 2019.
The German Catholic and Protestant Churches have blasted as “lamentable” current EU arms exports controls.