“Nuclear weapons cannot be the solution to the security problem”. Card. Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, said this in his address at the Summit on disarmament that is being held at the Synod Hall in the Vatican. “It might seem unrealistic, if not utopian, to talk about the prospects for a world free of nuclear weapons”, the cardinal began, referring to the theme of the Conference and starting with “an alarming fact: spending for nuclear weapons has been rising steadily worldwide, as well as the cost to upgrade nuclear arsenals”. Hence the need, as the Pope pointed out, to reflect on the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences that follow the use of any nuclear weapon, with devastating effects both in space and in time”. Not to mention the waste of resources that could be used “for peace and integral human development, to combat poverty and to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. For this reason, according to Card. Parolin, we need to ask ourselves “how sustainable is a stability based on fear, or on a false sense of security, or on the threat of destruction or global extermination, or simply on a balance of powers”.