Exactly 80 years since the day of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, a solemn Peace Memorial Mass was offered at Urakami Cathedral in that city on Aug. 9, 2025. At the Mass, Japanese Catholics were joined by four archbishops and by Catholic university leaders and students from the United States participating in a Pilgrimage of Peace commemorating the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to pray together for peace and for a world without nuclear weapons.
In a passionate homily, Nagasaki Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura said, “We must 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.”
In an English translation of Archbishop Nakamura’s homily, which he had delivered in Japanese, he recounted the horror that the nuclear bombing unleashed on that city.
“Eighty years ago, on August 9, 1945, at 11:02 a.m., an atomic bomb exploded approximately 500 meters above Urakami in Nagasaki. The city was reduced to a wasteland. At that time, 74,000 of Nagasaki’s 240,000 residents lost their lives. In Urakami alone, more than half of the 12,000 parishioners, totaling 8,500 people, lost their lives. The Urakami Cathedral, once hailed as ‘the largest cathedral in the East,’ was almost completely destroyed,” he said.
Before the Mass, a new bell donated by U.S. Catholics rang out for the first time in one of the two bell towers of Urakami Cathedral, replacing a bell that had been destroyed in the bombing 80 years earlier. Urakami Cathedral had been rebuilt in 1959 with one of the original bells recovered in the rubble of the original cathedral. As a sign of solidarity and faith from U.S. Catholics, the Nagasaki Bell Project raised funds for the casting and installation of the new bell, which rang together with the recovered bell at 11:02 a.m. – the moment when the atomic bomb exploded over the city in 1945.
As the Peace Memorial Mass at Urakami Cathedral began, Archbishop Nakamura blessed with incense two damaged religious artifacts that had been recovered in the rubble of the original cathedral after the bombing – the head of a wooden statue of Mary, and a wooden crucifix with the figure of Jesus missing his head and limbs.
Those two items were displayed near the altar during the Mass, and the archbishop framed his homily around them. He told the story of a church in Germany damaged by bombing during World War II, and the arms of Jesus on its cross were missing. After the war, they kept the cross where it was, and in the place of the cross beam where Jesus’s arms were missing, they put an inscription in German that read, “I have no hands but yours.”
“A similar thing happened here in Nagasaki. The head, hands, and feet of Jesus on the cross that you see next to this altar are also missing. Mary’s head is still there, but her face is blackened, and her eyes are gone. It was our hands that started wars and created weapons of mass destruction,” Archbishop Nakamura said.
Noting that people use their hands, feet and minds to hurt others, Nagasaki’s archbishop said, “We must work together with the hands of Jesus. More than that, we must live as the hands of Jesus… Our hope lies in God’s hands. Let us live as God’s hands.”
Concluding his homily, Archbishop Nakamura said, “Our peace depends on what we do… Our peace depends on how we walk. It depends on our feet, our way of thinking, our perspective, and our way of life. In other words, our peace depends on living like Christ. This means thinking, speaking, acting, and loving like Christ. For that reason, let us once again begin our true journey by gazing upon Jesus and Mary who survived the bombing, and considering how they became like this out of love for us.”
During the Mass, Archbishop Francisco Escalante Molina, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to Japan, noted that people had journeyed together to commemorate the anniversaries of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “to offer our prayers for those how suffered and those who died, and for lasting peace among all people.”
He noted that week included interreligious gatherings and meetings with civil authorities, religious leaders, diplomatic representatives and Hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings, to pray for peace, “a prayer that must never end.”
Archbishop Molina then read a message from Pope Leo XIV for the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings. In that message, Pope Leo offered respect to the Hibakusha survivors, saying their “stories of loss and suffering are a timely summons to all of us to build a safer world and foster a climate of peace.”
Reflecting on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the pontiff said, “The two cities remain living reminders of the profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons. Their streets, schools and homes still bear scars – both visible and spiritual – from that fateful August of 1945.”
Quoting words often said by his predecessor Pope Francis, he said, “War is always a defeat for humanity.”
Decrying nuclear weapons, Pope Leo said, “True peace demands the courageous laying down of weapons – especially those with the power to cause an indescribable catastrophe. Nuclear arms offend our shared humanity and also betray the dignity of creation, whose harmony we are called to safeguard.”
Again quoting Pope Francis, he said Hiroshima and Nagasaki “stand as ‘symbols of memory’” which urge the world “to reject the illusion of security founded on mutually assured destruction. Instead, we must forge a global ethic rooted in justice, fraternity and the common good.”
Pope Leo said he prayed that “this solemn anniversary will serve as a call to the international community to renew its commitment to pursue lasting peace for our whole human family,” and he then quoted from his first apostolic blessing on May 8, the day he was elected pope, when he urged the world to seek “a peace that is unarmed and disarming.”
The concelebrants at the Peace Memorial Mass included the four archbishops participating in the Pilgrimage of Peace: Washington Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop Paul D. Etienne of Seattle, and Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In remarks at the end of the Mass, Cardinal McElroy noted how while visiting Nagasaki three years ago, he had been deeply moved by visiting the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Urakami Cathedral.
The Martyrs Museum honors 26 Japanese Christians who were arrested in 1597 and forced to march barefoot for 30 days to Nagasaki, where they were hung on crosses and martyred on the Nishizaka Hill overlooking the city. Those Christians included St. Paul Miki, who along with those other 25 martyrs of Japan was canonized in 1862.
Praising the legacy of those martyrs, Cardinal McElroy said, “Their stories of courage and sacrifice, strength and love for Christ were and continue to be a vivid testimony of the ancient roots of the Church here in Japan, and the vitality of the Catholic community in this city which continues to this day. In walking their pilgrimage of suffering, they united themselves to Jesus Christ in an enduring and inspiring way that radiates grace to all of us who contemplate the love we have received in Jesus Christ.”
Reflecting on the Atomic Bomb Museum, the cardinal said it “spoke to me of the indefensible bombing which my own nation inflicted upon the people of Japan, and the power of nuclear weapons that haunts the modern world. The witness of these memorial days constitutes a siren call to the entire world to step away from the nuclear madness which threatens to engulf us through the pathway of modernization of existing nuclear weapon systems and the proliferation of weapons among new nations.”
He added that the “Hibakusha may be dwindling in numbers, but their heroic witness is the conscience of Japan to the world, reminding us of the dangers we are so blind to in the present moment.”
Cardinal McElroy said Urakami Cathedral had the most profound impact on him during his earlier visit to Nagasaki.
After “hidden Christians” in Nagasaki preserved the faith for generations and later endured exile and persecution, the exiled Christians eventually returned to that city and began building Urakami Cathedral in 1895 after the ban on Christianity there was lifted. The cathedral was completed in 1914 and was reportedly the largest Christian church in the Asian Pacific region before it was destroyed by the atomic bombing in 1945. Fourteen years later, the cathedral was rebuilt there.
“The decision to rebuild this cathedral in this place, the sacrifices of the Catholic community which made it possible, and the re-establishment of a vibrant community of faith on this very spot were for me a sign of God’s triumph over every form of human suffering, and God’s pledge to accompany us always, and especially in our times of greatest suffering,” the cardinal said.
Concluding his remarks, Cardinal McElroy said he felt that his visits to those three places in Nagasaki pointed to the foundations for true peace in the world.
“The Martyrs Museum points to the need for true faith in God, who is the author and Prince of Peace. The Atomic Bomb Museum speaks to the need to recognize the tragic human failings that produce wars, inflame hatreds and inflict searing wounds. And the rebuilding of this great cathedral points to overwhelming hope, the sustaining star which guides us toward peace even when it seems farthest away,” the cardinal said.
Washington’s archbishop said he would return to the United States moved by the faith, courage, compassion and joy he witnessed in Japan. “This local church of Nagasaki is profoundly a beacon to us all to remain faithful to the journey to peace to which the Lord called us in his first words after the Resurrection,” he said.
After the Mass, the pilgrims from the United States and Japanese Catholics marched together from Urakami Cathedral to Nagasaki Peace Park in a torchlight procession symbolizing the light of faith and the hope for a nuclear-free future that united them.
On Aug. 10, the Japanese hosts and U.S. pilgrims attended a Mass together at Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, the oldest standing church in Japan and a national landmark built in 1864 by missionaries who learned that the hidden Christians had been keeping the faith alive there for generations.
