The Vatican has long opposed nuclear weapons, but Pope Francis is making the cause one of the top diplomatic priorities of his two-year-old papacy. In December, the Vatican submitted a paper calling for total nuclear disarmament to the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. In January, Pope Francis touted nuclear disarmament as a major goal alongside climate change. Pope Francis has recently pushed the moral argument against nuclear weapons to a new level, not only against their use but also against their possession," Archbishop Bernedito Auza, the Holy See's Ambassador to the U.N., says. "Today there is no more argument, not even the argument of deterrence used during the Cold War, that could 'minimally morally justify' the possession of nuclear weapons. The 'peace of a sort' that is supposed to justify nuclear deterrence is specious and illusory." For Francis ... inequality and nuclear power are interwoven. "Spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations," Pope Francis wrote to the Vienna Humanitarian Conference in December. "To prioritize such spending is a mistake and a misallocation of resources which would be far better invested in the areas of integral human development, education, health and the fight against extreme poverty. When these resources are squandered, the poor and the weak living on the margins of society pay the price."