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The world needs to rethink personal security and move away from the idea that complex weapons systems can protect people, said speakers at a Vatican-led webinar.

Ecumenical and interreligious dialogue is an essential part of peacemaking and promoting disarmament because it helps religious communities focus on the sacredness of human life.

A contingent of national Catholic organizations has called on President Joe Biden to undertake steps to have the United States rejoin the Iran nuclear deal in an effort to promote peace and international security.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons enters into force on Friday, 22 January. Pope Francis’ words at Hiroshima, which defined even the possession of nuclear weapons as immoral, is the latest act of a long magisterium spanning the twentieth century up to the present day.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard conducted a drill Saturday launching anti-warship ballistic missiles at a simulated target in the Indian Ocean, state television reported, amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program and a U.S. pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic.

A Holy See-supported treaty banning the possession of nuclear weapons that is coming into force is buoying efforts by nations and nonprofit and church organizations working to abolish such armaments.

The goal of a nuclear-free world can only be achieved through a renewed sense of unity and solidarity among nations that breaks the dynamic of mistrust, said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican foreign minister. Addressing a webinar Dec. 16 on nuclear disarmament, Archbishop Gallagher highlighted the Vatican's support of political dialogue that goes "beyond the theory of fear" and of the need to "emphasize how nuclear deterrence represents a false sense of security and of stability."

Appealing for a worldwide commitment to initiating a "culture of care" for one another and for the environment, Pope Francis again called on nations to divert money from their military budgets to create a global fund to end hunger and promote development in the world's poorest nations.

An Appeal for Peace is signed in Rome by Pope Francis and by leaders of world religions gathered at the International Prayer Meeting for Peace "No one is saved alone - Peace and Fraternity".

"It seems that in many places, the supremacy of money over human beings is taken for granted," he said. "Sometimes, in the effort to amass wealth, there is little concern for where it comes from, the more or less legitimate activities that may have produced it, and the mechanisms of exploitation that may be behind it."

Two popes have visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki to highlight the dangers of nuclear war and to mourn its victims. St. John Paul II made the first papal visit in 1981. Last November, Pope Francis made the second.

The path to true peace requires the world to abolish nuclear weapons, an American bishop and a Japanese archbishop said as the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings at the end of World War II approached.

As the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of two Japanese cities approaches, the president of the county's Catholic bishops' conference called on the United States "as a Christian nation" to witness the Gospel of peace as lived by Jesus.

The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bomb explosions 75 years ago this August, hastening the end of World War II.