On the final day of our Pilgrimage of Hope in August 2025, commemorating the 80th anniversary of August 6, 1945 — the devastating day the United States detonated nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — we gathered for Mass at Oura Cathedral, Nagasaki. In 1865, Japanese Christians, who had been worshipping in secret because of the government’s repression of the faith for 250 years, came out of hiding and revealed themselves to a French priest, Father Bernard Petitjean, in this very church.
All of us gathered were aware of the poignant history of the place. This was holy ground — ground blessed by the blood of martyrs and sanctified by the disciples of the Prince of Peace.
Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, N.M., presided at this Holy Mass. Wester was one of the leaders of our pilgrimage and a co-founder of its sponsoring organization, the Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons. The Partnership was chartered by the Catholic Archdioceses of Santa Fe; Seattle; Nagasaki, Japan; and the Diocese of Hiroshima, Japan.
The partnership aims to (1) remember the destruction caused by nuclear weapons; (2) journey together to prevent nuclear harm; and (3) protect against nuclear harm — based on the principles of “remembering, journeying together, and protecting” that Pope Francis articulated during his 2019 visit to the atomic-bombed cities.
On this 80th anniversary year, the prelates invited American and Japanese students, faculty, and administrators from Catholic universities to accompany them. Also included in the commemorative pilgrimage were Cardinal Blase Cupich (Archdiocese of Chicago) and Cardinal Robert McElroy (Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and Chancellor of The Catholic University of America).
After the opening hymns and prayers of the liturgy, we heard an American student proclaim the reading from St. Paul’s letters to the Hebrews: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” Then a recounting of the story of Abraham and Sarah, of their suffering and sojourn, of their faith and trust, of their death and their heirs “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore.”
It struck me that as pilgrims of hope in this 80th year since the terrible detonation of nuclear weapons, we were in the midst of a similar experience of generational transition. Facing the enormity of historic suffering and the increasing threat of even greater violence and destruction in our future, we second, third, and even fourth generations were challenged to build a true peace and a world in which our children and grandchildren could flourish.
Among us were some who had seen those terrible days with their own eyes — the hibakusha, survivors of the bombings and the radiation poisoning that followed who became recipients of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. During our 10 days of pilgrimage, we learned of their lives propelled by faith and hope for something better. They pleaded with us to disarm, build bridges, do justice, create peace. We saw the record and evidence of the lives lost and ruined and the cities turned to rubble in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museums. We heard the preaching of the Japanese Church in Most Reverend Peter Michiaki Nakamura, Archbishop of Nagaski, who called us to “return to our true selves as children of God … abandon the fists, weapons, and tools of violence we hold in our hands, and stop creating and using nuclear weapons. Let us use our hands to love and embrace others.”
We participated in the presentation of flowers at peace park memorials and sang at interfaith prayer services. We heard Cardinal McElroy’s careful argument from which “it must be concluded that the acceptance and concomitant normalization of deterrence have utterly failed the moral requirement to frame a pathway toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Deterrence is not a step on the road to disarmament, but a morass.”
We read the words of those who have already passed home to God — Dr. Takashi Nagai; Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J.; and Pope Francis — asking us to disarm, build bridges, do justice, and create peace.
Our pilgrimage concluded with the testimony of university students who had been deeply engaged with one another in “Conversations in the Spirit,” dialogue intentionally seeking to make space for the Holy Spirit to guide and shape. As student pilgrim Natalie Pucillo (with whom I share an affiliation to both Catholic University and Loyola University Chicago) said, the students “lamented the past and hoped for the future,” “renewing [their] determination to work for peace and nonviolence.”
My own concluding reflection from this profound journey was the desire that my generation not fail our test or sleep through our moment, but rather be the people of faith, the makers of peace that our ancestors have hoped for and needed for humankind to make it to its future.
— Claire Noonan, D.Min., is currently serving as vice president for mission integration at Loyola University Chicago. She graduated from Catholic University with a B.A. in English and Religion in 1992.
