Holy See deplores cluster munitions

September 11, 2024

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CWN Editor's Note: A leading Vatican diplomat said on September 10 that the Holy See “deplores the fact that cluster munitions continue to be produced, stockpiled, transferred and, even worse, used in armed conflicts, inevitably causing more victims and contaminating more land.”

Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, made his remarks at a UN meeting on the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The majority of the world’s nations have ratified the anti-cluster munitions treaty—but several major powers, such as the United States, China, Russia, and India, have not.

Archbishop Balestrero called on signatory nations to live up to the Convention’s obligations and—without mentioning Lithuania by name—lamented the Baltic state’s recent withdrawal from the treaty.

“The deadly legacy of cluster munitions continues to haunt many innocent victims who have suffered the cruelty of conflicts,” the prelate added. “In this regard, as a family of nations, we should consider assistance to victims as a shared responsibility.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting the Second Vatican Council, teaches that “every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation” (n. 2314). Likewise, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church calls for the “banning of weapons that inflict excessively traumatic injury or that strike indiscriminately” (n. 510).

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