Priests dropping bombs

Father George Zabelka was chaplain to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki squadrons that dropped the bomb, and administered the Eucharist to the Catholic pilot who dropped it. He later renounced his actions: “To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as I see it . . . . I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best—at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them.”

The most tragic statement: “Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan . . . . One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children . . . . I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of the censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teaching.”