Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast.

I'm John, Fr.

John Deere, and today I'm speaking with my friend, Archbishop John Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This is a project of www .beatitudescenter .org, where you can find many other podcasts and regular Zoom programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and practicing nonviolence and working for a more just, more nonviolent world.

So let's begin with a little prayer as usual, and I invite our listeners, wherever you are, just to take a deep breath and to relax and recenter yourselves and enter again into the presence of the God of peace who loves you infinitely and personally and everyone everywhere.

And let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus here with us and ask for the grace to follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully and do God's will.

God of peace, thank you for all the blessings of life, love, and peace that you give us.

Be with us now as we reflect together on your call to follow the nonviolent Jesus and work for a more nonviolent, more just world.

Bless us, inspire us, disarm us, strengthen us, and send us out to do your will and to do our part to help end poverty, racism, greed, injustice, war, and especially nuclear weapons and environmental destruction.

that we might be your holy beatitude people, your holy peacemakers, and welcome your reign of universal love, nonviolence, and peace on earth.

In Jesus' name, amen.

It's a pleasure to welcome my great friend, Archbishop John Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, which takes up most of the state.

And he's talking with us from his office in Albuquerque, New Mexico on January 11th, 2022.

I think he changed the U .S.

Catholic Church when he issued a major document, a pastoral letter called Living in the Light of Christ's Peace, A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament.

It's the first official document in U .S.

church history calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

And what's more, it comes from the land where the atomic bomb was invented and where all nuclear weapons ever since have continued to be made and maintained.

at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Here's a quote from the letter.

We can no longer deny or ignore the dangerous predicament we have created for ourselves with a new nuclear arms race, one that is arguably more dangerous than the past Cold War.

In the face of increasing threats from Russia, China, and elsewhere, I point out that a nuclear arms race is inherently self -perpetuating, a vicious spiral that prompts progressively destabilizing actions and reactions by all parties, including our own country.

We need nuclear arms control, not an escalating nuclear arms race.

Further, we need to figure out concrete steps toward abolishing nuclear weapons and permanently ending the nuclear threat.

If we care about humanity, if we care about our planet, if we care about the God of peace and human conscience, then we must start a public conversation on these urgent questions and find a new path toward nuclear disarmament.

I invite all of us to step into the light of Christ and walk together toward a new future of peace, a new promised land of peace, a new culture of peace and nonviolence, where we all might learn to live in peace as sisters and brothers on this beautiful planet.

common home.

If you haven't read or seen the document, I urge you to go to his Archdiocesan website and read it.

It's all there at www, I'll say it and then spell it, archdiosf .org.

That's A -R -C -H -D -I -O -S -F dot O -R -G.

And Pax Christi has published a beautiful hard copy of it, which you could get.

Archbishop John Wester became Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2015.

Before that, he served as the Bishop of Salt Lake City, and before that, the Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco.

Last month, so I'm not sure when this will post, but in August 2025, he led an historic delegation of U .S.

bishops and cardinals.

to Japan to mark the 80th anniversary of the U .S.

atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Japan.

I haven't talked to him myself about the trip, which he called a pilgrimage of peace, so I'm happy to have him here and eager to hear about it.

Archbishop John Wester, welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you, John, very much.

It's so good to be with you again.

Thank you.

So before we get into the story of your past August trip for the 80th anniversary, In the pastoral letter, the first page, you tell about your first trip to Hiroshima.

And it's an amazing, powerful story because there you are one day in Hiroshima at their atomic bomb museum.

And the next day you're back at Santa Fe and you have company and you go up to Los Alamos and you visit the U .S.

Atomic Bomb Museum.

Tell everybody about that day.

Well, it was an eye -opener for me, John, because I was fresh in my mind and heart that I visited Japan, my first one in 2017, and seeing the devastation, the human suffering untold, hard to describe human suffering that took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

in august of 1945 and then coming back to santa fe and just really um maybe 100 200 yards from palace avenue where the scientists went in the front door and went out the back door and got on a bus up to los alamos and invented the atomic bomb and and so i realized my goodness i've seen both sides both ends of this the where it began and where it was and the only time it was detonated in a civilian population like that.

And so it just struck me that I really felt strongly that the Lord was prompting me to do something about this, to make this more known and to have a voice at the table in talking about multilateral verifiable nuclear disarmament.

So you've just returned again for the August 6th to 9th, 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You went with Cardinal McElroy, Cardinal Cupich, the Archbishop of Seattle, and apparently lots of students and faculty from Notre Dame, Marquette.

I'm not sure where else.

So take your time and tell us about the whole trip and what it was like and what you hoped from it and where the next steps are.

Well, yes, it's hard to describe in one sense.

It's the 80th commemoration of the bombing in 1945 of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And so it's not exactly a happy moment.

And there were a lot of hibakusha there, as your listeners know, I'm sure, the survivors of the bomb.

Archbishop Takami, whom you know, John, he's a wonderful man and he's a great guy.

And he was in his mother's womb in Nagasaki when it was bombed.

And he has a doctor friend who was older and there was many, most of them now, you know, probably around 10, 11, 12 years old or so when this happened.

And so it was a coming together of many peoples from many backgrounds.

for many reasons, to commemorate this moment.

And really, the basic message is to commemorate it so that we can advocate that it never happens again, that our world is safe from these horrendous, incredibly destructive weapons, far more destructive than they were in 1945.

and far more dangerous with artificial intelligence and hypersonic delivery systems and just the state of the world today and this very difficult time we're living in.

So clearly there was a lot of purpose to our meeting.

It was not just to commemorate the past, but it was really to preserve the present and to build for the future.

This is our pilgrimage of faith, you know, trying to do all those things.

And it was wonderful to come in with a lot of liturgies, a lot of speeches.

We had the, as you mentioned, John, we had the students, which was really encouraging, a lot, about 30 students from the United States and Japan, and mainly from Loyola in Chicago, and a couple students from...

in New Mexico, UNM, and also Notre Dame University.

And their professors came with them, some of them, and it was just wonderful to have their presence.

They were taking it all in.

And I'll be 75 in a month or two.

And I was admiring these students sitting through these speeches after speeches.

We like to give speeches.

But they were all taking it in and going to the museums and celebrating the liturgies with us.

And really, I think it was very moving to see them as they began to see in a more visceral, palpable way what we're talking about with nuclear weapons.

You know, we've been given a narrative for so long, so many decades.

that nuclear weapons are the keepers of the peace.

And so people, when they hear nuclear weapons today, they think, oh, yes, that's deterrence, isn't it?

That's what's keeping us keeping the peace.

Well, that narrative is not one that I agree with and that many of us agree with.

And certainly you, John, and your wonderful work with peacemaking and the gospel of peace and the Beatitude Center have promoted that same message that we've been lulled.

into that sense that nuclear weapons are keeping us safe.

When in fact, nuclear weapons are really the biggest threat, really, if you think about it, on a large scale that we face in the world today.

And the very thing that we're told is going to keep us safe is really the biggest threat to humanity that we have in human civilization.

And so this is part of our message to get that across to our young people, to everybody.

who will listen, that we need to remember this so that we never underestimate the power of nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear weapons, and how important it is to advocate for their complete abolition in our world, for verifiable multilateral disarmament.

And so that was Cardinal McElroy and Cardinal Cupich both gave excellent talks.

I gave a talk, Archbishop Etchin from Seattle gave a talk.

We have many from Japan, obviously, that gave wonderful talks.

We had translators there.

And different religions, representing different religions, giving talks.

We had an interfaith meeting.

We have it every year.

And Archbishop Takami is now the head of it, this interfaith committee that meets every year for a symposium in the afternoon and then followed with a dinner.

And so it was a wonderful opportunity.

We've become good friends with the Bishop Shirahama of Hiroshima and Bishop Nakamura of Nagasaki.

And as I say, Archbishop Takami, Archbishop Nakamura and Takami in Nagasaki.

And this year we had the group worked very hard to restore the bell in the tower there, the church, the cathedral and the Orami Cathedral in Nagasaki.

And you know, of course, that the bells of Nagasaki and the song of Nagasaki are famous books that have been written about Dr.

Nagai.

One was his own book, his memoir, and the shorter one, the one was about him.

But so it was really telling to have the beautiful to have that bell after 80 years restored.

The cathedral, of course, has been restored and for many years now.

And that was a beautiful, beautiful place to be, to remember and to pray and to bring us together.

And we, of course, a lot of the students went to the Jesuit division where, you know, Father Arrupe was when the bomb hit Nagasaki.

He was injured in the blast, not mortally, not seriously.

But and then with his medical background, he went around Nagasaki ministering to people.

And so they were able to.

uh visit that that the novitiate and then also we had uh at the uh orami um cathedral that it used to be the it's not a cathedral today but it was the the center it was the church where in nagasaki remember that in japan uh catholics christians would be um murdered if they were caught for many years there was a whole period there of the persecution of christian japan and And and so many were in hiding.

Many of the Catholics were in hiding.

And this is the church where many of the Catholics heard the Catholic priest that the Japan had now lifted the persecution.

They had stopped it.

And and so many people, many missionaries started coming back.

They heard there was a Catholic priest at this church and they went up.

to see, and at great risk to their personal safety, they didn't know.

As far as they knew, it could have been some kind of a trap or something for them to come out of hiding.

But they had great courage, and they went up there and talked to the priest, and he showed them the statue of Our Blessed Mother, the statue of Mary.

And that statue is there today, the statue that they all gazed upon.

And they knew when they saw that, that this was truly a Catholic priest who had come there to open up the parish again and bring in the sacraments.

So there are a lot of these kinds of stories, these kinds of realities of people sharing stories that we were able to reflect upon.

And basically just people of goodwill.

coming together from different religions, different walks of life, to promote the gospel of peace, to promote us living together in harmony with one another.

Principally, though, with the focus of getting rid of these terrible weapons that threaten us today.

Thanks, Archbishop.

You know, for those who are listening who are not from New Mexico or from anywhere else, I cannot stress.

how shocking this is to hear Archbishop Wester calmly talk like this.

So think about it.

He's the Archbishop of New Mexico.

And, you know, there he is meeting with all the bishops and leaders of Japan in Hiroshima.

You know, just 15 years ago, after living in New Mexico for 20 years, I was banned by the previous archbishop from praying for peace at Los Alamos.

And then, you know, had my faculties removed publicly for because I was calling for nuclear disarmament and getting death threats.

Now, archbishop is going over there.

Tell me a little bit.

We don't have too much time, but about your work with.

to build solidarity with the Japanese bishops and the diocese there with New Mexico.

Because to me, that is really creative peacemaking.

And it's almost like about time.

Here, 80 years later, the churches in Japan and the churches in New Mexico are coming together in reconciliation for the first time under your leadership.

Well, yes, thank you for bringing that up, John, because that's really been one of the fruits of the letter, which, by the way, was your idea.

Thank you again for suggesting to me writing that letter, that pastoral letter, because I think that's really what was the springboard for all of this.

And so Archbishop Etchen, I saw, gave a statement against nuclear weapons.

He has the Trident submarines in his archdiocese, any one of which has enough firepower.

to completely destroy human civilization throughout the world.

It's hard for my mind still, after all this time, to grasp that, that each one of those submarines has enough nuclear firepower to destroy all of human civilization in the world overnight.

And so he came out strongly, and I invited him to join me in inviting the bishops of Japan and Hiroshima and Nagasaki to form what we call...

The Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons.

Oh, wow.

Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons.

We've got bylaws.

Really?

Yeah, and we're inviting people to participate.

Organizations can participate either as endorsing or participating members.

And really what that means is that if you're endorsing, that means we can put your name on our website and say that.

You know, your Catholic group, diocese, parish organization, maybe a parish peace and justice group is endorsing our partnership.

Or you can participate.

And that would mean that once a year, it's very simple, once a year, you would be on a Zoom meeting and we'd all gather and have, you know, a meeting, an annual meeting and share some highlights of best practices, some of the highlights of things that have been done.

So Bishop Shirahama is a Sulpician.

priest, become bishop.

And he's done a lot of the legwork on getting the bylaws ready and Archbishop Nakamura and Paul and I assisting.

And so it's been really a wonderful experience.

We've come to know each other.

We've built friendships.

Gee, that's great.

Yeah, it's just been wonderful.

If people wanted to check it out, where would they go?

What website?

Well, the website would just go for WWW Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons.

That's a long title, John.

Yes, PWNW is how we abbreviate it.

So is the website PWNW .org?

Right.

Now, let me ask you, you know, I've told you this, that I'm not allowed in Japan because I'm an ex -con for having hammered on a nuclear weapon.

And I've been invited there, invited to speak at Hiroshima several times over the decades.

But, you know, their constitution doesn't allow convicted felons from the U .S.

in.

So there you go.

So I've never been.

What was the actual moment like?

I presume it was.

In Hiroshima, was it at 8 a .m.

that morning?

And was silence?

How many people?

Did they have speeches outdoor there in the Peace Park?

Right.

So in Hiroshima, around 11, I think it's 8, 11, I forget the exact time.

Around 8 in the morning, they always, remember what we're doing, prayer service, civic service, there's a pause of silence.

And Nagasaki is left for 11.

And we, so in Hiroshima, we begin, typically this is our third time there with this experience.

It's an interfaith service at the Peace Park there.

We have, there's a table set up with many flowers.

And keep in mind, this is August, so it's very hot.

Very humid, even at 6 a .m.

It's quite hot and humid.

And you can hear the crickets and all that.

And of course, Japan's a beautiful country and the people are beautiful people.

And then we, so the different religions come forward.

We go, Paul and I usually typically come forward with others.

And we pray the prayer of St.

Francis.

And we have other prayers.

And then we, they have a table and there's pitchers of water.

Because the victims of the bombing shortly before they died experienced severe thirst, excruciating thirst, and they were clamoring for water.

And so we have pictures of water.

And of course, there's a great devotion.

to the ancestors in japan and so there's kind of that that sense of providing you know that now and their flowers of course and uh and then the different religions have their different customs and then we go over to the main event if you will uh the larger event anyway and that would be the civic event where they have speeches and choirs of children singing and the prime minister is typically there other ambassadors of different countries are there Different religious heads, people of that sort are there.

But it's quite a thousand, thousands of people are there.

It's a national holiday, of course.

People are off work.

Wow.

It's just quite an event.

And a lot of media?

Yes, there's a lot of media there.

A lot of security, as you imagine.

A lot of security, a lot of media.

But I must say, the whole atmosphere, it's very reverent.

It's very prayerful.

There's a sense of the somberness of what it is that we're commemorating.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about the pastoral letter.

What were you hoping to accomplish?

And now it's, you know what, four years later maybe.

And, you know, it came out.

Pax Christi published thousands of copies.

And then it seemed to me, John, you just...

took off speaking all over the country and the world, even the United Nations, because it opened so many doors.

But then there was also the interesting question, what could happen to New Mexico?

You know, because there's so many thousands of Catholics and Christians involved in making nuclear weapons all over the state, one of the poorest in the country.

What kind of reaction have you gotten all these years later in the state from the politicians, the labs, and so forth, and globally in the church?

So talk about the reaction and what it's been like for you.

Well, the purpose of the letter, in my mind, was always to initiate and or sustain a conversation about nuclear disarmament.

Typically, the conversation centers around the two poles of deterrence and disarmament.

That's kind of the two sides of the argument, if you will.

It's more complicated than that, but that kind of sums it up.

And so I wanted to just have a conversation.

I wanted to be clear that I'm not trying to...

engage in this heated debate and put anybody down or call people warmongers or anything.

My sense is that if people of goodwill come together and discuss the situation of nuclear weapons, it will naturally lead to the conclusion that we must disarm.

And I think it will also remind us that we have done that.

I mean, in the past with Kennedy and Khrushchev initiating that in the early 60s.

We went from over 80 ,000 nuclear weapons to the 13 ,000 plus we have today.

But sadly, we're in a nuclear arms race today that's worse than the first one.

And as I mentioned, with artificial intelligence and hypersonic delivery systems, etc.

So my point was hopefully to join others.

It's not just me, but to join others.

building this conversation the reaction interestingly enough has not i have not received any um strong i mean i i guess anyway you we all some of us get hate mail from time to time on different issues i haven't gotten hate mail or really strong uh you know harsh email i'd say that the most common reaction is I would say perhaps indifference, mild interest, but nothing more than that.

Either they really, really agree and they say, thank you so much for doing this, or they smile and say, oh, that's interesting.

It reminds you of St.

Paul, the Areopagus.

Oh, you must touch it.

We must talk about that some other time.

They're kind of like, you know, putting it off.

And so that's my...

reason why we just have to keep engaging the conversation.

Last September, we had a symposium at the University of New Mexico, and Cardinal McElroy came and gave a talk.

We had Sig Hecker, the former head of LANL Labs, where the bomb was first created, and where they're currently building new pit cores for a completely new arsenal.

And we've met with the head of Sandia Labs, and we've met with scientists.

We've met with State Department officials.

They were at this symposium at UNM.

And my sense is that all of them agree that nobody wants a nuclear war.

I mean, that would be just suicide.

But where we seem to have disagreement is how do we prevent nuclear war?

Our solution would be, yeah, get rid of the weapons and you can't have nuclear war.

No nuclear weapons, no nuclear war.

Easy.

The other side, to put it that way, would say, no, we need these weapons to...

to to keep us safe because no one would dare begin a war uh knowing that we have all these weapons of course they they don't take into account uh that we're human beings and the pencils have erasers and that uh you know uh you know uh the department of defense secretary of defense senator kennedy said the only reason we avoided nuclear war in 62 in the cuban missile crisis was luck And luck is not a good strategy for saving our lives.

So so that to me is kind of where the rubber meets the road, where we have to, you know, say, do we really think, you know, they I have to say another reaction, John, that I've gotten is that we're naive.

Yeah, that's a very common one.

Oh, you're just being naive.

Yeah.

But our response to that as well.

Who's really naive?

Those who think we can live with nuclear weapons or those who think we can live without them?

I would suggest you.

And meanwhile, there's Jesus that you and I claim to follow.

So why I think you're...

changed the church.

And it was so frustrating to me in 1984 when the U .S.

Catholic Bishops Peace Pastoral Letter came out.

For those who may not remember, it was, you know, huge news because this had never happened before and Cardinal Bernadine was on the cover of Time.

And it's the first statement anywhere in the world where...

It's so divided.

Half the letter says Jesus was totally nonviolent, and you can follow the nonviolent Jesus.

The other half says, and so we should get rid of nuclear weapons, but maybe we need to really keep some because of deterrence.

which I don't think works.

Your letter comes along and says no to the whole thing of deterrence or the existence of nuclear weapons.

And by the way, we are supposed to follow Jesus.

My question is about Pope Francis, then Archbishop.

He then in his last years, I never thought I'd live to see the things he did, but in particular about nuclear weapons and his own visit to Hiroshima, where he said, he's saying things like, There's no just war, but there's no deterrence anymore.

That's not working, but it's not of the gospel.

And I think he changed the directory of the church, and everybody's trying to pretend he didn't.

What do you think about what Pope Francis did?

Any thoughts on him and his work for peace and discernment?

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, John.

I mean, Pope Francis dramatically and very...

powerfully changed the whole discourse of the Catholic Church on nuclear weapons.

Because in the document you quoted in 1983, the bishops allowed for deterrence.

It's kind of like, well, okay, you know, we shouldn't have weapons, but we'll have it.

But that's off the table now.

I mean, the Pope's exact quote was even merely possessing nuclear weapons is immoral.

And that's on a variety of fronts because...

The weapons are already being used, even if they're not used.

Look at what is happening in Russia and Ukraine.

You know, Putin is using nuclear weapons as a threat.

And it's really circumscribing the nature of that war.

And not to mention the money that's spent on them that could be going to the poor.

People are dying of starvation every day in our world.

And here we are spending up to trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons.

So there's so many reasons why the Pope is so on target.

Even possessing of your weapons is immoral.

Now, the interesting thing is, though, that this isn't an interesting what people choose to ignore.

I mean, nobody says, I mean, I remember Cardinal McElroy years ago wrote an article in America Magazine in which he lamented the fact that we've become inured to war.

We've become inured to violence and to...

to starvation.

Over 65 ,000 people have died in Gaza.

We're going to have a protest tomorrow in Albuquerque to continue to raise an awareness or sustain awareness of what's going on there because this is tragic.

But we just, we read it and then we sip some more coffee and go on about our daily life.

You know, these are things that we can't ignore.

I'm not suggesting, I mean, what can any one of us do?

We can't.

change the trajectory by ourselves, but we have to join our voices with others and at least engage the conversation and do something to make our leaders recognize that we're not going to stand for this, that we need to get rid of these weapons.

I mean, it's our lives that are going to be lost, our children's lives, our grandchildren's lives.

Our civilization is going to be lost if there's ever an Armageddon.

I mean, what are we going to do?

Have to reinvent the wheel, reinvent fire, reinvent Tutsillan.

the bible scripture any any advance has ever been made by humankind will be wiped out who knows what will be left after an arm again the destruction will be uh complete and total and the nuclear uh winter would last at least 10 years over 5 billion people will die mostly from starvation i mean the scenario is just uh awful and maybe it's one of those things that people just as soon stick their head in the sands and not think about it Pull the covers over your head and just don't think about it.

But I think we need to think about it and talk about it and get rid of these weapons.

Well, that's so beautiful.

Thank you, Archbishop.

And thank you for modeling that for us.

I mean, nobody wants to talk about nuclear weapons all day long and go around the country and do it.

But as you said, it's that or just sit back and do nothing and be indifferent or pretend it's.

not happening.

But you've shown us that we can each do something.

And I think everyone can do something.

We can all take to the streets like you're going to tomorrow and be peaceful and stand up publicly and say no.

That was the brilliance, I think, of the pastoral letter.

And I've been around for 45 years in the peace movement.

I never heard anybody call for a national conversation.

And so that was a very nonviolent, gentle way to say, folks, we're going to talk.

It's time to talk.

We can't just pretend this isn't happening.

Now I want to ask about Jesus.

How does he fit into all of this?

I know that's a stupid question, given we're talking about the end of the planet.

I remember reading once a placard that someone had at a protest that said, God, we can destroy in 15 minutes what it took you 15 billion years to make.

You know, that really resonated with me.

That's what we're saying to God.

And Jesus is, blessed are the peacemakers.

Love your enemies.

Put down the sword.

And so that's why I call this the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast.

And you write about Jesus.

So tell me, in your own words, for our listeners who are interested in the idea of the nonviolence of Jesus.

What that means for us in light of these weapons and this predicament we're in.

Well, you know, John, you've been so good about reminding us of that essential fact that Jesus is the center of everything.

I love that Jean -Pierre J.

Cassatt quote that, you know, Jesus' hidden activities in every atom of matter, every fraction of a second, we see Christ at work in our lives.

And that's so critically important.

In John 17, he prayed for peace.

We're eavesdropping on the personal prayer, the intimate prayer of Jesus and his father, Abba.

And he's praying for peace.

He's praying that we come to be one in him and in him and the father.

And so this is such an essential part of what this is all about.

And that's why people say, well, You know, you should butt out, you know, and let the politicians and the military people deal with this.

That's a scary thought.

I think, no, we belong in this conversation.

We're in the public square.

We've got to keep promoting the gospel and hoping people will hear and listen.

And so that, you know, I can, I can, I love this quote from Omar Bradley.

Imagine a five -star general of the army.

Exactly what you're talking about, John.

He said, we have men of science, too few men of God.

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant, may prove to be our executioner that's a powerful quote it seems to me and he puts christ right at the center the sermon on the mount right there you know matthew 5 it's just so i think that that's really what we have that's what gives us the courage and the hope to go on because we are like a voice in the desert crying out and no one seems to be listening but we persist we have to all persist and not lose hope Because this is what Christ calls us to do.

And Christ promised to be with us to the end of the age.

I believe firmly that Christ is behind all of these movements.

What you're doing in the Beatitudes Center, Pax Christi, the Church's Catholic social teaching.

This is all founded in Christ.

And so that's what's going to keep us going.

And I think that's what's going to achieve success in the end.

Well, thank you so much.

We're out of time.

Is there anything else you'd like to add before we end?

I bet you've sort of summed it up so well there.

Well, just to thank you, John.

I really appreciate all your good work.

God bless you for what you're doing, and God bless the Beatitudes Center.

Thanks, Archbishop.

And thank you for all the great work you're doing.

And will you come on next year?

We'll make this an annual thing, and you can give us a State of the Bomb kind of talk.

Oh, I'd be honored.

I'd be honored, yeah.

It'd be a happy occasion.

Well, you're doing great things, and you're encouraging us to carry on, to speak out.

So thank you.

And thanks, dear friends, for listening to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast.

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And if you can, please offer some positive feedback or a review of the National Catholic Reporter.

You can write a letter to the editor about the podcast.

or Apple, or Spotify, or YouTube, or the dozens of other platforms that we're on, but mainly if you could help spread the word about the podcast by telling all your friends and colleagues and churchgoers.

May the God of peace bless you all, and keep on following the nonviolent Jesus.

See you next time.