|TOP|The leaders of Scotland’s three main churches have united to launch a petition calling on the UK Government not to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system.

The Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Episcopal Church of Scotland signed the petition together at Holyrood Monday and will now work to rally support until September when the petition is handed in at Westminster.

The petition, signed by Morag Mylne, convener of the Kirk’s Church and Society Council, together with Cardinal Keith O’Brien and the representatives of other churches, urged the government not to invest in a replacement for the Trident system.

It called instead for the government to begin a process of decommissioning these weapons with the intention of diverting the sums spent on nuclear weaponry to programmes of aid and development.

|AD|Ms Mylne commented: “There are certain issues which unite the Churches in Scotland. One of these is our revulsion at the continued presence of weapons of mass destruction in Scotland.”

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has openly criticised the Trident weapons system, which is based on the Clyde not far from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city.

The Church and Society Council will appeal to the General Assembly later this month to oppose any move by the British government to replace Trident with a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The council will also ask the General Assembly to “affirm our belief that any system of weapons designed to destroy whole cities has to be considered morally repugnant and an evil in the world."

Cardinal O’Brien said: “I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent comment that there should be the “fullest possible” public debate on the Trident nuclear missile system. The Catholic Church has clear and consistent teaching on nuclear weapons. The use of weapons of mass destruction would be a crime against God and against humanity that must never happen.”

He continued: “The Church teaches that it is immoral to use weapons of mass destruction in an act of war to do so would be to commit a crime against God and man himself that merited unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation. Equally storing and accumulating such far from eliminating the causes of war, actually risks aggravating them."