April 18, 1954: Leaders of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in Easter messages to-day denounced the hydrogen bomb. Pope Pius XII, in his Easter broadcast to the world from Vatican City, called for a ban on atomic, biological and chemical warfare. The Pope broadcast from his private apartment on the third floor of the Vatican palace. Although still slowly struggling towards recovery from his illness, he spoke in a strong clear voice. Nearly 200,000 people, including pilgrims from all parts of the world, listened in silence in the great colonnaded space below the palace in front of the Basilica of Saint Peter... The Pope said there was year by year a mounting anxiety on the part of the peoples of the world. They feared a third world conflict and a future at the mercy of new destructive arms of unprecedented violence. These means of destruction were capable of causing the total extermination of all animal and vegetable life and of all the works of man over ever vaster regions. They were now capable of polluting in a lasting manner the atmosphere, the land and the oceans even distant from the zone directly stricken and contaminated by nuclear explosions. Thus, before the eyes of a terrified world, there is presented a review of gigantic destruction, of extensive territories rendered uninhabitable and unfit for human use, the Pope said. This is over and above the biological consequences that can result either by the changes brought about in germs and micro-organisms, or through the uncertain effect which a prolonged radio-active stimulus can have upon greater organisms, including man, and upon their future offspring.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 02:26:54 +0000
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