The following Schiller Institute and International Peace Coalition press release is posted on the Schiller Institute website at this link.
Letter to Archbishop John Wester to Urge Pope Leo XIV to Call a Peace Conference to Stop Nuclear War Signed by Prominent Peace Organizations and Activists
On Friday, July 31, at an online Roundtable Conference, “Solve the Immigration Crisis With Development: The Strategic Significance of Pope Leo’s Encyclical,” sponsored by EIR News Service and the International Peace Coalition, Jack Gilroy, a long-time peace activist with the Pax Christi New York State Council, Veterans for Peace, Ban Killer Drones, and the International Peace Coalition of the Schiller Institute, released the news that he, in collaboration with other leading peace activists, has written a letter to the U.S. Catholic Archbishop John Wester, the strongest advocate in a U.S. Archdiocese working for the banning of nuclear weapons. (Wester’s Santa Fe, New Mexico diocese is the home of Los Alamos.) The letter urges the Archbishop to request that Pope Leo XIV convene an emergency international peace conference with Presidents Putin, Xi, and Trump, to halt the present wars, stop the expansion of nuclear weapons to Russia’s border, and ban nuclear weapons, as we face the greatest threat of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Over 130 prominent peace activists and several leading peace organizations have already signed the letter.
Gilroy stated at the conference that, in organizing support for the diplomatic initiative called for in this letter, “It’s primarily Pax Christi and the International Peace Coalition that have worked together for the past three weeks to fulfill what the International Peace Coalition is all about: to try to prevent war—nuclear war—and to use development as the alternative, as the answer, to the constant military buildups.”
“All of that is possible,” Gilroy stated, “but we asked, ‘Where are we going to find the answer?’ And we are looking back at history, and we think diplomacy can work, does work. But getting diplomacy started is… extremely difficult.”
In recounting the history of diplomacy to stop a nuclear war, Gilroy cited the famous case of Pope John XXIII, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which is detailed in the letter. A trio of concerned citizens—US journalist Norman Cousins, an influential Soviet citizen, and Belgian monk Fr. Felix Morlion—just happened to be discussing the need for nuclear disarmament when President Kennedy announced on national TV a blockade of Cuba in response to the discovery that Soviet missiles had been placed there. With the consent of Kennedy and Khrushchev, Morlion contacted the Pope, to whom he was an advisor, and urged him to help diffuse the crisis, which seemed to be heading toward WWIII.
The Pope agreed and delivered a very stirring message for peace. It stated in part: “With your hand on your conscience may each one hear the anguished cry which is raised to the skies from all parts of the earth: Peace, peace! We renew this solemn plea today.” This poignant cry for peace had a tremendous effect on both Kennedy, the first Catholic president, and Khrushchev, who saw that it was published in full on the front page of Pravda. Khrushchev characterized the speech as “the first ray of real light” during the crisis. Cousins then served as a liaison between Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Pope until the Pope’s death on June 3, 1963. Seven days later, Kennedy delivered his American University commencement address, which was the most powerful and visionary call for peace by a US president in the 20th Century. Cousins had written the first draft, and Kennedy refused to give the Pentagon intelligence community, or the State Department, any say.
As Jack Gilroy states in the letter to Archbishop Wester, “With this in mind, we were thinking it might be time for something similar to happen today.” Pope Leo XIV, he noted, had already suggested something along these lines at the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he prayed that the bombings would ‘serve as a call to the international community to renew its commitment to pursuing lasting peace for our whole human family—a peace that is unarmed and disarming,’ Perhaps the Vatican or another neutral location such as Vienna or Geneva could be the venue.”
Gilroy concludes the letter with this appeal to Archbishop Wester: “Would you be able to help bring this recommendation to Pope Leo? We believe you, as a strong and highly-respected advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons, would be the ideal diplomat to encourage Pope Leo to bring Putin, Trump, and Xi Jinping together to plan an end to nuclear weapons and to pave a new road of economic conversion from a war economy to economic development for all people everywhere. Your intercession and the strong leadership of Pope Leo could move us away from the sheer madness we are now experiencing.”
Jack Gilroy stated in his presentation at the July 31 conference that one of the signers of the letter, Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, Washington, D.C., was the lead speaker at a peace conference in Nagasaki, Japan on July 25, where, before many Japanese public officials, Kuznick brought up the significance of widely circulating this letter internationally. Several Japanese figures have already signed. Kuznick has also discussed this appeal to the Pope in a recent Consortium News webinar, “How Close Are We to Nuclear War?,” with fellow letter signer, Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and Co-Founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), hosted by Consortium News Editor-in-Chief, Joe Lauria.
As we head into the proverbial “Guns of August,” Gilroy’s letter makes clear that “we are getting as close to nuclear war as we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. That crisis ended with diplomacy that saved the planet, and Pope John XXIII was a key figure in making that happen.” Today, he is calling on prominent figures around the world to urge Pope Leo XIV to play the same role, and he is calling on more peace activists and organizations to sign the letter.
This letter was written in collaboration with the Pax Christi New York State Council, and Rosemarie Pace, Ed.D., PCNYS Coordinator; USA Palestine Solidarity Working Group; Pax Christi International Sudan Working Group.
This is a link to the letter, with the list of signers:
The letter has been endorsed by 7 recipients of the annual Pax Christi USA “Teacher of Peace” Award: Jim Albertini (2010); Roy Bourgeois (1997); Marie Dennis (2022); James W. Douglass (1994); Kathy Kelly (1998); William Quigley (2003) and Martin Sheen (1999). Archbishop Wester is this year’s recipient of the “Teacher of Peace” award.
Some of the many prominent individuals endorsing the letter include: Professor Richard Falk; Ira Helfand; Professor Peter Kuznick; former US Congressman Dennis Kucinich; Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Founder, Schiller Institute), Melissa Parke (Executive Director of ICAN); Susan Schnall (President, Veterans for Peace USA); Col.(ret) Lawrence Wilkerson; Col.(ret) Ann Wright, and Professor Ivana Hughes (President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation). Please consult the entire list for more on these and all other endorsers, and their organizational affiliation.
U.S. organizations that have endorsed the letter include: Veterans for Peace, and Historians for Peace and Democracy.
For more information, and/or to add your name to the letter, please contact Ron Bettag at ronbettag@gmail.com
