CODEPINK and the undersigned organizations ask that you as Archbishop of Los Angeles and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops please endorse Archbishop John Wester's beautiful letter calling for verifiable steps to ensure nuclear disarmament. In addition, we ask that you publish your own letter calling for the rejection of nuclear "modernization" (rearmament), elimination of ICBM's on hair trigger alert and support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, signed by over 80 countries. Your letter might also urge the nation's Catholics to choose a life-affirming occupational path, not one in the nuclear weapons industry that funnels our resources into planning for human extinction.
Our request is an urgent one, Archbishop Gomez, for at this very moment the United States is shipping bunker buster weapons to Ukraine in a conflict that pits the world's largest nuclear powers, United States and Russia, against each other. One miscalculation could lead to the use of tactical nuclear weapons or worse, resulting in regional annihilation and imposition of a devastating nuclear winter on the rest of the globe.
We applaud both Archbishop Wester and Pope Francis, who declared, "We must never grow weary of working to support the principal of international legal instruments of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation."
We deeply appreciate the Vatican becoming the first nation state to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Archbishop Wester felt he had a "special role to play in advocating for nuclear disarmament, given the presence of Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear weapons laboratories in New Mexico." We would posit that you and your LA diocese also have a special role to play because Los Angeles and the Southland are the seat of the military industrial complex, with the world's largest weapons contractors located in El Segundo, the South Bay and San Pedro. One of those contractors, Northrop Grumman, has the sole source contract to build 600 new underground nuclear missiles or ICBM's--a threat to all life.
We look forward to hearing back from you Archbishop Gomez and thank you for your time and consideration. We must think big during these perilous times and mobilize our resources to ensure humanity's survival.
Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP)
CODEPINK
World Beyond War
Veterans for Peace
Peace Action
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
MLK Coalition of Greater Los Angeles
Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles
Jewish Voice for Peace-Action
Veterans for Peace-Chapter 7, Los Angeles
LA Jews for Peace
Topanga Peace Alliance
Progressive Democrats of America
RootsAction
Veterans for Peace-Chapter 136, The Villages/Florida
World Beyond War-Central Florida
San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition
Environmentalists Against war
Peaceworkers
Pax Christi-Southern California
Pax Christi-New York State
Pax Christi-Metro New York
Pax Christi-Pittsburgh
Pax Christi-Northwest
Pax Christi-Little Rock
Pax Christi-Rhode Island
The Beatitudes Center
California People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty
LA Petrophysical
Link to Archbishop John Wester's Anti-Nuclear Letter
https://archdiosf.org/living-in-the-light-of-christs-peace