"I am convinced that the desire for peace and fraternity planted deep in the human heart will bear fruit in concrete ways to ensure that nuclear weapons are banned once and for all, to the benefit of our common home." 

His Holiness Pope Francis, December 2014

"There can be no place for weapons of mass destruction in a world that God loves so much."

The Right Reverend Alan McDonald, former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

The inhumane nature of nuclear weapons is evidenced from a variety of perspectives above and beyond their sheer destructive potential. First, their capacity for annihilation instantly negates all the achievements of civilization and strips all existence of meaning. Second, continued nuclear weapons development and modernization generates dire socioeconomic distortions. Third, the maintenance of a nuclear posture locks countries into continuous military tension.

Daisaku Ikeda, President, Soka Gakkai International (SGI)

“To plan a strategy around such weapons is to be defeated by them. To threaten such an outrage against humanity and its world is to begin to lose one's moral and human dignity. To work for a world free from nuclear arms is to work for the sake of that moral and human dignity.”

The Right Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, September 2009

“Law after all is based on the moral sense of the community and the moral sense of the community draws deeply from the reservoirs of morality that are present in religion. All legal systems at their formative stages of development drew heavily upon religious principles, not in the sense of the dogma, or shall we say the ritual, or the high theology of religion, but upon the basic principles of morality which were contained in that body of religious teaching.”

Christopher Weeramantry, former Vice President of the International Court of Justice

“Nuclear weapons are utterly incompatible with the values upheld by our respective faith traditions — the right of people to live in security and dignity; the commands of conscience and justice; the duty to protect the vulnerable and to exercise the stewardship that will safeguard the planet for future generations. Nuclear weapons manifest a wanton disregard for all these values and commitments. There is no countervailing imperative — whether of national security, stability in international power relations, or the difficulty of overcoming political inertia—that can justify their continued existence, much less their use.”

Faith Communities statement on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, December 2014