37 religious organizations join annual commemoration growing each year since 2024
What began two years ago as a small gathering of faith-filled voices has become a powerful annual witness to peace. On Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, at 6 p.m., the Franciscan Peace Center and the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration will host their third annual Hiroshima Nagasaki Prayer Service via Zoom and open to all.
This year’s theme, “From Remembrance to Abolition,” calls participants to prayerfully honor those killed in the 1945 bombings while renewing their commitment to a world free from nuclear weapons, weapons that, today, number more than 12,000 warheads held by the world’s nuclear-armed states.
The service has grown steadily: 14 co-sponsoring congregations and more than 525 registrants in 2024; 16 co-sponsors and over 1,100 participants in 2025. This year, 36 communities of Catholic sisters and peace and justice organizations stand together as co-sponsors, making this the broadest expression yet of this collective spiritual witness.
“As we remember the suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we pray that world leaders will commit to ending the manufacturing of these weapons of mass destruction,” said Dr. Jennifer Kryszak, Director of Strategic Planning for the Franciscan Peace Center. “This prayer service is both a remembrance and a call to action.”
The event also responds to a call from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious for “100 Days of Prayer, Fasting, and Advocacy” as a collective spiritual witness running from July 26 through Nov. 3, 2026, during which participating congregations each dedicate a day to pray and act for peace and justice. This Aug. 6 gathering is one such communal offering.
Co-sponsoring organizations include the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls.
“The Franciscan value of ‘kinship’ is more than a value — it is also a feeling based on the reality that all of us are deeply connected to one another and to the rest of creation,” said Mike Schut, director of integral ecology for the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls. “War, then, is always a massive affront to and negation of that reality.”
Praying for peace reminds us of our kinship and provides a space for us to reconnect with the feelings of kinship, he said. “Praying for peace may inspire us to work for peace today.”
The prayer service will be recorded for those unable to attend live. Register in advance at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T5ADkQluTGSDZjEO114Bjg.
The public is invited to join the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls in person to watch the virtual prayer service, Schut said. They will in gather in St. Francis Hall Aug. 6 at 6 p.m.