The head of Catholic chaplains for the U.S. military said President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is not morally justifiable.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio’s remarks to CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” published in transcript ahead of an interview to air Sunday, are the latest evidence of growing backlash toward the president’s deadly and economically destructive war.
Broglio, who oversees more than 200 catholic priests who serve as chaplains for U.S. service members, said he agrees with Pope Leo XIV, who has condemned the war and the Trump administration’s promotion of it using biblical references and video game memes and has urged negotiations for peace.
In his remarks, the archbishop said:
Under the just war theory, it is not [justified] because while there was a threat with nuclear arms, it’s compensating for a threat before the threat is actually realized. And I think there, I would line myself up with Pope Leo, who has been urging for negotiation. I realize also that you could say, well, ‘with whom are you going to negotiate?’ And that is a problem. But in the meantime, lives are being lost, both there and also among our troops. So it is a concern.
The archbishop conceded that the Trump administration may have had information that led it to think war was the only option, but he said it’s “hard to cast this war, you know, as something that would be sponsored by the Lord.”
Broglio’s comments speak to a tension that Trump’s war and trigger-happy foreign policy has exacerbated between the administration and many in the Catholic community, including some of the president’s supporters. Those tensions seem unlikely to be helped by the Pentagon’s decision this week to host a Good Friday service for Protestants, but not a Catholic service, as HuffPost reported.
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s questions about the archbishop’s remarks, which go against the rhetoric of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has framed the war as some kind of Christian crusade.
In December, Hegseth vowed a “top-down cultural shift” among the military’s chaplains during a rant in which he said chaplains are “not emotional support officers.” Hegseth’s continued fixation on military “lethality” seems likely to sideline anything that might curb his and the Trump administration’s bloodlust — whether that’s international law or religious morality.
Despite these pressures, prominent voices working alongside the U.S. military, like Broglio, are still speaking out.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.