“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Mt 5:9)
I have always had a deep devotion to our Blessed Mother. Still, when I stepped into the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, Japan, and saw the remains of a statue of Mary that had been nearly destroyed by the atomic bomb, I was profoundly moved. Often called Hibaku no Maria and Our Lady of Nagasaki, the sculpture consists only of the head of a statue of our Blessed Mother that was otherwise destroyed in the bombing. Through this image, it seems Mary as Mother is clearly telling us that she is still with her suffering children, as she was the day the atomic bomb was dropped over the cathedral. She always hears and answers our prayers, especially of those who are suffering. Is it any wonder that in her appearances this past century she has begged for prayers and penance to avert war and to end war? Mary clearly calls her children to work and pray for peace.
In August 2023, joined by Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, I traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Archdiocese of Seattle is home to the largest stockpile of deployed nuclear weapons anywhere in the world. Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons were first built and tested, is in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. As the ordinaries of these two sites, each so significant in the arms race, we felt called to journey to Japan as pilgrims of peace.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we participated in the commemorations marking the anniversary of the bombings. We also met with Bishop Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama of Hiroshima, Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami, who is archbishop emeritus of Nagasaki, and with Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura, the current archbishop of Nagasaki, to develop Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of Catholic organizations seeking to remember the impact of nuclear weapons and protect our world from their future consequences.
In August 2025, Archbishop Wester and I returned to Japan for the 80th anniversary of the bombings. This time we were joined by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C. Also participating in our peace pilgrimage were administrators and students of Catholic universities—the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, Loyola University Chicago, and Marquette University—along with similar delegations from Junshin Catholic University of Nagasaki and Sophia Catholic University of Tokyo. We were able to meet with Nihon Hidankyo, an organization that promotes the rights of hibakusha (survivors of the bombings), and to advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
On these journeys, we attended prayer services and civic memorials. We prayed at Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki. We knelt in the chapel where the arresting image of Mary is enshrined. It is impossible to come away from these experiences without being profoundly moved and disturbed by the impacts of nuclear and atomic bombs.
Abolishing Nuclear Weapons
The nuclear bombs that are stockpiled and built today are more than 30 times more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago. We must not comfort ourselves that we have defense systems capable of repelling a nuclear attack. That is a myth. There will be no surviving a nuclear war. “Nuclear war,” said Pope Benedict XVI, “will have no victors—only victims.”
Over the past 60 years, church teaching has grown more and more critical of the mere existence of nuclear weapons. In “Pacem in Terris” (1963), St. John XXIII recognized that nuclear deterrence does not lead to peace but simply to the development of more weapons. He called for a commitment on the part of all nations to disarmament and to the abolition of nuclear weapons. That commitment was reiterated in the pastoral letter on peace of the U.S. bishops in 1983. In 2017 Pope Francis stated bluntly: “The threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned.”
The church has consistently recognized that the arms race is also a moral failure when governments spend vast resources on developing or updating their nuclear arsenals at the expense of other initiatives that would better serve humanity and the common good. Between now and 2034, the United States is expected to spend $1 trillion on nuclear weapons modernization programs—and that is not to add new weapons, just to upgrade existing arsenals and delivery systems. As President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation in January 1961, the only entity benefiting from this type of spending is the military-industrial complex.
Becoming Builders of Peace
How can we become builders of peace? Where do we begin?
For Christians, it begins with the words and actions of Jesus and with a commitment to live his teaching not in an ordinary, but in an extraordinary way: “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:20). That surpassing witness means overcoming violence with more love and more goodness. It means bringing his extraordinary love into the world through our own lives: living the active nonviolence of Jesus when he walked through the crowd that was going to throw him over the cliff (Lk 4:16-30). It means responding to an angry mob as Jesus did when the woman taken in adultery was brought to him (Jn 8:1-11). These were not miracles of Jesus, but instruction in nonviolence by example. Jesus shows us how to confront difficult individuals, groups and situations in our own day. (To explore these themes more deeply, I highly recommend Terrence J. Rynne’s 2014 book Jesus Christ, Peacemaker: A New Theology of Peace.)
There are things we can do to be peacebuilders. When I had the privilege of speaking in Hiroshima last August, I reflected on what Pope Francis has called weapons of peace: simple, basic practices rooted in the Gospel and Catholic social teaching. They are quite simple and yet demanding in practice. I encourage each of us to take up these weapons for the common good of our society and world today.
• Cultivate the Beatitudes.
• Live the virtues of faith, hope and love.
• Develop your prayer life and grow in your relationship with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for this is the goal of a mature Christian life.
• Practice patience.
• Learn to listen and engage in good conversation that truly seeks to understand the other rather than drowning them out with your own voice.
• Exercise mercy and reconciliation in your community, family and relationships.
• Learn to recognize the dignity of every person and treat them with the respect such dignity requires—whether in person or online.
In the early days of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV has called for a revolution of love. He is inviting us to recover our biblical theology and embrace our modern-day problems with a willingness for reconciliation.
G. K. Chesterton famously said: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.” I believe that what is most needed today is difficult, but profoundly simple: people who know Christ intimately and are willing to live by his teaching and his example of sacrificial love, with the hope and promise of eternal life. If we truly believe we have been baptized into the body of Christ, that we have “died” with Christ to this world and risen to a new life, the life of the Risen Jesus, then let us act accordingly.
Peace is not just a distant dream. Peace is a reality that requires our diligent, daily attention. Being peacemakers and peacebuilders is not an option but an essential requirement for any disciple who wishes to grow closer to Christ and closer to the kingdom of God, day by day.
Mary Queen of Peace, pray for us.
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