Pope Francis Sunday railed against atomic weapons, the nuclear deterrent and the growing arms trade, as he paid tribute to the victims of the "unspeakable horror" of the Nagasaki bomb.
In a highly symbolic visit to the Japanese city devastated by the nuclear attack in August 1945, Francis said nuclear weapons were "not the answer" to a desire for security, peace and stability.
"Indeed they seem always to thwart it," he said.
At least 74,000 people died from the atomic bomb unleashed on the city in western Japan -- just three days after the world's first nuclear attack hit Hiroshima and killed at least 140,000.
"This place makes us deeply aware of the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another," said the sombre pontiff on the first full day of his Japan trip.
Hundreds of people in white waterproofs sat in torrential rain to hear the pope's speech, next to the emblematic photo of a young boy carrying his dead baby brother on his back in the aftermath of the attack.
He laid a wreath of white flowers and prayed silently, unprotected from the lashing downpour.
Francis took aim at what he called the "perverse dichotomy" of nuclear deterrence, saying that peace is incompatible with the "fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation."
The 82-year-old Francis also hit out at the "money that is squandered and the fortune made" in the arms trade, describing it as an "affront crying out to Heaven" in a world where "millions of children are living in inhumane conditions."
At a Mass at a baseball stadium in Nagasaki with worshippers now shielding their eyes from the sun, Francis said the city "bears in its soul a wound difficult to heal" and warned that "a third World War is being waged piecemeal."
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