Nearly 50 photos shed light on pain of Vietnamese, Japanese war victims
	VAVA, Japan Gensuikyo cooperate to fight against nuclear, chemicals weapons
	Vietnam Peace Committee affirms support for anti-nuclear weapons movement

Pope Francis met with Hiroshima survivors on a Japan visit. AFP/Handout

The cities are the only areas to have been targeted by nuclear weapons, the 1945 attacks by the United States killing 224,000 people.

The catechism is the church's official instruction book, which summarises the principles of the faith.

"I have said that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral," the pontiff told reporters during his flight back to Rome.

"This must go into the catechism of the Catholic Church, not just use but also possession," he said, adding that "a government's madness can destroy humanity".

In 2018, Pope Francis added a categorical opposition to the death penalty to the document.

Francis criticised international organisations such as the United Nations Security Council for not taking decisive action to reduce arms or avoid wars.

He also blamed "the hypocrisy of those who produce weapons", referring to Christian countries in Europe.

"They talk peace and they live for weapons, it's called hypocrisy," he said.

"A nation must have the courage to say, I cannot speak of peace because my economy is gaining a lot with weapons manufacturing."

On the subject of nuclear energy, he stopped short of calling for a complete phase-out but said he believed its use came with risks.

“The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral — as is the possession of atomic weapons,” the pope declared at the Hiroshima peace memorial.

In a somber visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki Sunday (Nov 24), Pope Francis condemned nuclear weapons as “immoral” and called for a world without them, Huffpost reported.

“The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral — as is the possession of atomic weapons,” he said at the peace memorial in Hiroshima, where an American atomic bomb in 1945 — the first in the world — killed at least 140,000 people.

“We will be judged on this,” he warned.

Francis spoke with survivors there, one of them who was a 14-year-old factory worker at the time.

“No one in this world can imagine such a scene of hell,” Yoshiko Kajimoto said as she described fleeing the scene, The Associated Press reported. Victims’ “bodies were so burned and totally red. Their faces swollen to double size, their lips hanging loose, with both hands held out with burnt skin hanging from them. They no longer looked human.”

Earlier in the day, the pontiff visited Nagasaki, which the U.S. bombed three days after Hiroshima, killing some 74,000 people.

“Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation,” the Roman Catholic leader said in remarks there in the driving rain.

The pope emphasized that resources wasted creating nuclear weapons could far better be used helping humanity.

“In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance, and sale of ever more destructive weapons are an affront crying out to heaven,” he said.

Francis’s trip was the first papal visit to Japan in nearly 40 years. On the last trip in 1981, Pope John Paul II also visited Nagasaki.

Francis is the first pope to speak out against nuclear weapons, even for “deterrence.”

He has long hankered after a trip to Japan ever since he was a young missionary.

The pope also reiterated his dream of travelling to China, saying he loves the country and would like to go to Beijing./.