With the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recently past, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles stopped to reflect on the atomic bombings and their effects on the residents of those communities.

Gomez, who is also the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued the following statement on the conference's website: 

“My brother bishops and I mourn with the Japanese people for the innocent lives that were taken and the generations that have continued to suffer the public health and environmental consequences of these tragic attacks,” Gomez said. “On this solemn occasion, we join our voice with Pope Francis and call on our national and world leaders to persevere in their efforts to abolish these weapons of mass destruction, which threaten the existence of the human race and our planet.

In early August 1945 and in the months that followed, between 90,000 and 146,000 people died in Hiroshima, and 39,0000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki when the United States military dropped atomic bombs on those communities. The bombing of Hiroshima occurred on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki was bombed on Aug. 9. The Catholic Church opposes the use of nuclear weapons, especially against threats that are not nuclear in nature, according to USCCB. 

“We ask our Blessed Mother Mary, the Queen of Peace, to pray for the human family, and for each one of us,” Gomez said in his statement. “Remembering the violence and injustice of the past, may we commit ourselves to being peacemakers as Jesus Christ calls us to be. Let us always seek the path of peace and seek alternatives to the use of war as a way to settle differences between nations and peoples.”

Resources for study, prayer and action to remember the effects of those events and those whose lives were lost are available at www.usccb.org/nuclear.