NAGASAKI:  Pope Francis reiterated his call for a world without nuclear weapons during a visit on Sunday to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the two Japanese cities devastated by the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings.

The possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is "not the answer" to a desire for security, peace and stability, the pope said in a speech at the hypocenter in Nagasaki before a crowd of about 1,000 people including hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors.

"This place makes us deeply aware of the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another," the pope said of the atomic bombing that took place in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

"Here in this city, which witnessed the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of a nuclear attack, our attempts to speak out against the arms race will never be enough," he said.

"The arms race wastes precious resources that could be better used to benefit the integral development of peoples and to protect the natural environment," the pope said.

He said, "I ask political leaders not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security."

Before the speech, Pope Francis laid a wreath of flowers and prayed silently for the victims of the atomic bombing.

Shigemitsu Tanaka, 79, head of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council, said, "I was impressed with the pope's offering of a long prayer at the hypocenter."

"The pope called on us to have a determination to make Nagasaki the last place to suffer a nuclear attack," Tanaka said.

Later, Pope Francis visited a monument to 26 Japanese and foreign Catholics crucified in 1597 as part of a Christian persecution. He prayed for them and said, "let us speak out and insist that religious freedom be guaranteed for everyone in every part of our world."

At a local baseball stadium, he led a mass for some 30,000 faithful.

Later on Sunday, the pope traveled to Hiroshima, which was atomic-bombed three days before the attack on Nagasaki, and joined about 2,000 people at a gathering for peace.

In a speech at the meeting, he said the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is a crime and immoral.

"How can we propose peace if we constantly invoke the threat of nuclear war as a legitimate recourse for the resolution of conflicts?" the pope asked. "A true peace can only be an unarmed peace," he said.

Yoshiko Kajimoto, 88, a hibakusha who told the pope about her experience of the atomic bombing during the meeting, said his visit "represented a major footprint" for Hiroshima.

Pope Francis arrived in Japan on Saturday, becoming the first pope to visit the country since the 1981 trip by Pope John Paul II.

JIJI Press