Pope calls for global nuclear ban on anniversary of Nagasaki

Pope Francis gestures as he talks during a special audience with members of ''Eucharist Youth Movement'' in Paul VI hall at the Vatican, August 7, 2015.

 VATICAN CITY-Sun Aug 9, 2015

Pope Francis called for a global ban on nuclear weapons on Sunday as he commemorated the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Francis told the crowd in Saint Peter's Square after his weekly Angelus address that "in war there are only losers, the only way to win a war is not to fight it".

The bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945, "have become the symbol of the enormous destructive power of man when he makes a distorted use of the progress of science and technology", the pope said.

He said the "tragic" bombings constitute "a permanent appeal to humanity to repudiate war for ever and to ban nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction".

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by Digby Lidstone)