Call to Disarm

The U.S. bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee urged Secretary of State John Kerry to step up efforts to advance nuclear disarmament. The comments were made in a letter on May 12 issued as the meeting of the Ninth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons continued at the United Nations. “For most Americans, there is an assumption that the nuclear threat receded with the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth,” said Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, N.M., chairman of the committee. “In a multi-polar world where there are risks of nuclear proliferation and even nuclear terrorism, it is imperative that the world move systematically and relentlessly toward nuclear disarmament and the securing of nuclear materials.”