“Opposing our commitment to the attempt to forget”: this is the imperative voiced today by mgr. Heinz Josef Algermissen, bishop of Fulda and president of the organisation Pax Christi, in the run-up to the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. In a release posted yesterday, mgr. Algermissen stated: “In prayer and silence, let’s honour the memory of the dead and the survivors of the bombings”, and “let’s confirm their dignity with our promise never to forget them”. Such remembrance day “reminds us of the relevance of our responsibility for a nuclear disarmament policy”, went on the bishop, who accused the political world and the military strategies to contribute “to showing atomic weapons as mere deterring weapons”. But “the humanitarian catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might happen again”, warned Algermissen, who stated that “any use of atomic weapons, whether intentionally or unexpectedly, massively and lastingly changes the climate, the environment and the basis for food”. The victims of the bombings, he concluded, “are still there, as a warning to mankind, to ban lethal weapons forever”.

03/08/2012 -