Pax Christi USA is happy to announce that the Catholic bishops who participated together in an August 2025 pilgrimage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been nominated as the Arms Control Association’s Persons of the Year. We encourage our entire membership to vote in support of the bishops’ nomination. No requirements are necessary for voting: anyone can participate! Voting is happening NOW through January 12.
In August, Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich, Washington DC’s Cardinal Robert McElroy, Santa Fe’s Archbishop John Wester, and Seattle’s Archbishop Paul Etienne met with bishops from Japan and Korea in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reaffirm the commitment made to create the Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons (PWNW), of which Pax Christi USA is a member. Use this link to read more about the pilgrimage.
If you are part of a Pax Christi state chapter or region, a local group, religious community, parish, college or high school, we encourage you to circulate this information to your email lists and over social media. You can download the graphic we’re using to support the bishops here.
Pax Christi USA has been honored to partner with Archbishop Wester and the Santa Fe Archdiocese in support of his pastoral letter, “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament,” and members of Pax Christi Pacific Northwest have worked closely with Archbishop Etienne on his engagement on this issue. This award is a new opportunity to elevate the message of nuclear disarmament and lift up our shared work for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Voting for the bishops would help:
- Enhance their credibility as leaders on nuclear weapons issues.
- Raise their profile and influence in the international arms control community, national and regional media, and with elected leaders, including — for the US bishops — with their state congressional delegation and state politicians.
- Encourage the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to promote the issue of nuclear weapons disarmament.
- Increase readership of Archbishop Wester’s pastoral letter (available in English here and Spanish here).
- Galvanize the efforts of Pax Christi USA and others in the Catholic Church in the US and beyond, plus national and international interfaith leaders, toward nuclear disarmament.
- Bring more public attention to bear upon the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories that are located within the Santa Fe Archdiocese; the Hanford nuclear site, which remains the most radiologically contaminated site in the western hemisphere, and Naval Base Kitsap, home of the largest stockpile of deployed nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, both in the Archdiocese of Seattle; and in general the US’s $2 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program.
The Arms Control Association shared this on the voting site:
Catholic cardinals and bishops from Japan, South Korea, and the United States for their pilgrimage of peace to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of the two cities in August. The US delegation included Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago; Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, DC; Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle; and Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The pilgrimage was coordinated by the Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons to help encourage many other bishops, religious, dioceses, parishes and organizations to join in work for a more peaceful world without nuclear weapons. In Hiroshima, Cardinal McElroy noted: “Deterrence is not a step on the road to nuclear disarmament, but a morass. That is why the Church could not continue to tolerate an ethic which de facto legitimates possession.” See: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265637/catholic-bishops-to-join-pilgrimage-of-peace-to-japan-on-anniversary-of-atomic-bombings
All four more than deserve it.
David-Ross Gerling, PhD