Day of Prayer, Fasting & Advocacy - August 6, 2025

On the 80th anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, we pray forgiveness and commit to help build a more just and peaceful world.

As part of our response as women religious to the challenges we are facing as in our times, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious invited every religious community of Catholic Sisters to participate in 100 Days of Prayer, Fasting, and Advocacy between Ascension (May 29) and Labor Day (September 5).

Our Leadership Team selected August 6—the 80th Anniversary of the nuclear attacks by the United States against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as our special day of commitment in remembrance of the victims of the attack and to pray for a world without war. We pray in reverence for the forgiveness from those who were attacked, their descendants, their country people, and for forgiveness from God, who gave us the free will to design weapons so horrifyingly powerful, that we could destroy the gift of God's creation.

We invite you to join us in prayer, fasting and advocacy on this day.

• Pray in the way that resonates most deeply with your spirit

• Fast from whatever keeps us from being Spirit-led and mission-focused

• Advocate—both locally and at the state level — for the systemic changes that align with God’s dream for justice and compassion.

• Resources from Pax Christi USA

  Prayer:

  On this day of God of life, we turn to you in these days of remembering the horror of hearing the stories about atomic fire raining down on Hiroshima and Nagasaki of unrelenting loss. Forgive us for forgetting the cost, the loss, the heartache, the suffering. Forgive us for the violence we have inflicted On so many sisters and brothers, on the earth. Help us to remember what we too cannot bear to think of as lost forever in a nuclear war. Help us to build a more just and peaceful world. Amen

  Adapted from "A Prayer to Remember, to Repent, to be Afraid" by Marie Dennis, Director of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence and member of Pax Christi International

Apology Petition on the 80th Anniversary of US Atomic Bombing

The Congregation has signed the Pax Christi petition to apologize for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can read the full petition here. In part, the petition states:

• As citizens of the United States, we invite people to publicly ask God for forgiveness for the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused the immediate death of more than 200,000 people, and hundreds of thousands more who died in the aftermath as a result of radiation poisoning.

• We apologize to the people of Japan – and to the survivors of the bombing, the hibakusha – for our country’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we ask forgiveness for these atrocities.

• We implore the US government to end its nuclear modernization program, renounce its first-use nuclear policy, and to sign and ratify the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which bans the use, possession, testing, and transfer of nuclear weapons under international law. We also implore the other eight nuclear nations to ratify the TPNW, as 73 nations already have.