“An urgent and necessary step to avoid nuclear catastrophe”.

That’s how Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, has described the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The Archbishop was speaking, Friday 26 September, at the 14th UN conference on the entry into force of the treaty, which was signed by the Holy See 29 years ago.

The Archbishop stressed that the failure to ensure the treaty's entry into force “undermines global efforts against nuclear testing”, and raises questions regarding “ethical responsibility”.

A dangerous illusion

“Peace cannot be secured through mutual fear or the logic of deterrence,” said Archbishop Gallagher, pointing out that nuclear testing has had catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.

“Regrettably, the continuous expansion and modernization of nuclear arsenals, accompanied by increasingly belligerent rhetoric and threats concerning their deployment, perpetuate the dangerous illusion that security can be achieved through the threat of annihilation,” he added.

Nuclear weapons as global threat

Speaking at the high-level meeting organized to commemorate the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Archbishop Gallagher recalled the profound suffering caused by the first nuclear test in New Mexico 80 years ago, and the tragic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that followed.

The British Archbishop also emphasized “the ongoing threat that nuclear weapons continue to pose to global peace, to future generations, and to creation”.

Gallagher went on to express the Holy See’s “profound concern over the growing trend towards extensive rearmament”.

“The continued and massive diversion of resources to armaments, rather than to efforts that promote integral human development and lasting peace,” he said, “is unacceptable and calls for renewed international responsibility”.

An AI ‘arms race’

Another source of concern, Archbishop Gallagher said, is “the emergence of a new arms race characterized by the integration of artificial intelligence into military systems, including space assets and missile defense systems”.

A world free of nuclear weapons

The Holy See's Secretary for Relations with States called on the international community to renew its commitment to disarmament and its respect for international commitments and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

This implies, Archbishop Gallagher said, ratifying the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as a “concrete step towards achieving a world free from nuclear weapons and preventing ... catastrophic humanitarian consequences".

Finally, the Archbishop called for ‘renewed efforts towards broader disarmament measures, including the revitalization of bilateral arms control processes, the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the commencement of negotiations on treaties concerning fissile material and negative security assurances.”