The Church in the United States makes a pilgrimage for Peace to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 80th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Japan.
By Luis Miguel Modino
2025 marks eighty years since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 in 1945. Marking the memory of these events, the Catholic Church of the United States is conducting a pilgrimage from August 4 to 11, visiting these two cities. University professors, employees, and students from American Catholic universities are participating, accompanied by the archbishops of Chicago, Cardinal Cupich; Washington DC, Cardinal McElroy; Seattle, Bishop Etienne; and Santa Fe, Archbishop Wester. Also participating in the pilgrimage is Emilce Cuda, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Prayer, dialogues for reconciliation
This pilgrimage takes place in the Year of the Jubilee of Hope and recalls Pope Francis’s call to “remember, walk together, and protect.” The goal is to establish prayer dialogues for reconciliation, solidarity, and peace throughout the Pacific region, bridging religions and generations amid local instability, widespread divisions, and intensifying nuclear threats.
Various commemorative and academic events will be held in the two bombed cities. Specialists in Catholic ethics will highlight the humanitarian and environmental consequences of atomic weapons, and young people will debate intergenerational justice and peacebuilding as part of the program. This is an opportunity to critically and comparatively evaluate the Catholic Church’s approach to nuclear issues and their legacies in both countries, considering the current religious and geopolitical context.
Organisers and programme
The pilgrimage is coordinated by the Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons (PWNW), founded in August 2023 by the bishops of four dioceses in the United States and Japan affected by nuclear weapons development (Santa Fe, Seattle, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki). It is sponsored by participating Catholic universities such as Georgetown University, Loyola University Chicago, Marquette University, the University of Notre Dame, Junshin Catholic University of Nagasaki, and Sophia University in Tokyo.
The programme includes visits to local city halls, Jesuit novitiates, Catholic churches bombed and rebuilt, museums related to the atomic bombs, peace events, messages from Nobel Peace Prize laureates and atomic bomb survivors, as well as bishops from the United States, South Korea, and Japan. In addition, there will be Masses for Peace, academic symposiums, interreligious celebrations, peace pilgrimages, and commemorative ceremonies honouring the victims of the atomic bombings.
