Berkley Center

It is unusual for events long past to resonate so powerfully in the present.

In reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki five years ago our much-missed Berkley Center colleague Fr. Drew Christensen, SJ, a leading expert on the nuclear issue, wrote that “the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings should mark a fresh start for the movement to abolish nuclear weapons.” Since then, Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield and the United States and China, locked in geopolitical rivalry, have continued to modernize their arsenals. 

Earlier this month, as I departed on a Catholic pilgrimage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to mark the 80th anniversary of the bombings, I recalled Drew’s increasingly relevant appeal to work towards nuclear disarmament—a priority of Pope Francis since reiterated by Pope Leo. Looking back on the trip several weeks later, I feel the force of that appeal at a visceral level. 

The pilgrimage was led by prominent U.S. Church leaders—Cardinals Robert McElroy (Washington, DC) and Blase Cupich (Chicago) and Archbishops John Wester (Santa Fe) and Paul Etienne (Seattle)–and included students, faculty and administrators from Georgetown, Notre Dame, Loyola Chicago, and Marquette. I was part of the Georgetown delegation along with my colleague, Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., who serves as Vice President for Mission and Ministry, and four exceptional undergraduates: Keira Ferrell, Luke Hughes, Ella Lowry, and Sean Moran. The trip was brilliantly organized by Hirokazu Miyazaki of Northwestern University.

Graciously welcomed by our Japanese hosts, we immersed ourselves in a packed schedule of commemorative masses, academic symposia, and visits to the peace parks that mark ground zero in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our encounters with Hibakusha—atom bomb survivors—were particularly moving. Their testimony about the horror of the attacks—the instant death of more than one hundred thousand people and the slower demise of almost as many through severe injuries and radiation sickness—made the human toll of devastation more vivid, reinforcing the impact of the powerful images of destruction and suffering on display in the museums in both cities. 

An emotional stop on our pilgrimage was a visit to the Jesuit novitiate outside Hiroshima where the young Pedro Arrupe, a Spaniard who had gone to Japan on mission work, witnessed the bombing and tended to the wounded. Arrupe, who would serve as Father Superior of the Society of Jesus from 1965-83, later wrote and spoke movingly of the experience and how it impacted his vocation. To celebrate Mass with friends on the pilgrimage in the very room where he and his colleagues had cared for bombing victims was a poignant reminder of how deeply the cause of nuclear abolition, which can seem so abstract, is bound up with the call to serve those in need. Peace, justice, and service are inseparable. 

I will also never forget the interfaith ceremony in Nagasaki at ground zero the evening before the anniversary of the bombing there on August 9. As the sun was going down over the park, representatives of diverse religious traditions recalled the destruction and despair eight decades earlier and spoke movingly of peace and reconciliation as our shared human vocation. I was particularly struck by the reflections of Archbishop Etienne, who called for remembrance, reflection, and repentance. His mention of “repentance”—a full change of heart and mind—struck the Americans in attendance. What was and is still described to us as a necessary military operation was in fact an unjustified attack on the civilian population. That is the painful truth. 

On the last day of the pilgrimage, I participated in a public roundtable with Japanese university leaders. In Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral, beautifully rebuilt after its destruction in 1945, we discussed peace education and the hopes we place in our students. As the only American on the panel I tried, as best I could, to pick up on Archbishop Etienne’s reflections. With repentance goes responsibility, I emphasized. Americans have a special responsibility to promote nuclear disarmament, because of what happened in Nagasaki and Hiroshima but also because of the power and influence of our country—outsize influence that today is so often not advancing the global common good, on the nuclear issue or other critical challenges facing our divided world.

We left Japan with a renewed sense of our responsibility, as Americans and global citizens, to promote a world free of nuclear weapons. At the Berkley Center, we will carry on these efforts to honor our dear friend Drew, whose life and work remains an inspiration to us all.