Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said that nations have the right to self-defense but urged them not to use it as an excuse for rearmament.
Parolin addressed the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly in New York on Sept. 26 at the opening of its 81st session. The U.N. chose “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that delivers for All” as the theme for this year’s assembly.
Parolin quoted Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which he said “emphasized that ‘there is an urgent need to shift from the ‘culture of power’ to a genuine ‘culture of negotiation,’ in which dialogue and diplomacy become the standard means of resolving conflicts.’”
Parolin said that nations have a right to self-defense, but not as a pretext for arming themselves, especially with nuclear or autonomous weapons.
“No true peace is possible without genuine common resolve for disarmament; the legitimate right of every people to provide for its own defense must not degenerate into a race to massive rearmament,” Parolin said.
Parolin’s remarks uphold the stance of the Holy See and of Pope Leo XIV regarding nuclear disarmament. In May, Pope Leo XIV rejected United States President Donald Trump’s claim that he supported nuclear weapons.
In July, Leo wrote a foreword to the book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift,” citing American singer Bob Dylan, who criticized the manufacture of nuclear bombs during the Cold War.