“Not Sponsored by the Lord” — Military Archbishop Broglio Declares Iran War Unjust

The military archbishop told Catholic troops to “do as little harm as you can” — and rebuked Pete Hegseth’s invocation of Jesus from the Pentagon press room. The interview airs Easter morning on CBS.

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Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services and one of the most conservative Catholic prelates in the United States, declared the Iran war unjust on CBS’s Face the Nation in an interview set to air Easter Sunday.

He told Ed O’Keefe that Catholic service members are not morally bound to obey every order in a conflict that fails the Church’s just war criteria — and that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s invocation of Jesus Christ to justify the war is “problematic.”

“Under just war theory, no,” Broglio said when asked directly whether the conflict with Iran is justified. The war, he explained, “anticipates a nuclear threat rather than responding to realized danger.” He aligned himself with Pope Leo XIV’s repeated calls for negotiation, while acknowledging the difficulty of finding willing partners on the other side.

The interview will land on American television sets the morning millions of Catholics mark the Resurrection. The timing — Easter morning, with millions of Catholics in pews — is deliberate.

Broglio is not Cardinal Cupich or Cardinal McElroy — bishops the Catholic right has long dismissed as liberal outliers. He is the bishop of the United States military itself, a man appointed by Pope Benedict XVI, a prelate whose conservative credentials were, until recently, unimpeachable.

For years, Broglio was a reliable ally of the political right on questions of religious liberty and military culture. His transformation under Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate has been one of the most underreported stories in the American Church.

That transformation accelerated this Lent. As Pope Leo XIV mounted a month-long public campaign against the Iran war — calling aerial bombings a sin, demanding a ceasefire by Easter, and condemning what he called the “imperialist occupation of the world” — Broglio moved with him.

While Bishop Barron went on Ben Shapiro’s show to soften the pope’s anti-war message and reassure MAGA Catholics that the Holy Father’s words were merely “pastoral,” Broglio sat down with a CBS News anchor and stated flatly that this war does not meet the moral criteria that Catholic teaching requires.

O’Keefe pressed him on what that means for the 1.8 million Catholics currently serving in the U.S. armed forces. Broglio’s answer was careful but unmistakable. American military law, he noted, only permits conscientious objection to war in general — not to a specific conflict.

Lower-ranking personnel are obligated to follow orders unless those orders are “clearly immoral.” But Broglio offered his own counsel for Catholic troops caught between obedience and conscience: “Do as little harm as you can, and preserve innocent lives.”

The archbishop who oversees every Catholic chaplain in the U.S. military just told American troops, on national television, to minimize their participation in a war their own Church considers unjust.

Broglio stopped short of calling for mass desertion or telling soldiers to lay down their weapons, but the moral framework he laid out leaves Catholic service members with a stark conclusion: the war in Iran is not just, and their faith demands they act accordingly within the limits of their authority.

O’Keefe then raised Defense Secretary Hegseth’s public prayers for the war’s success from the Pentagon press room — and his repeated invocations of Jesus Christ to frame the conflict as righteous.

Broglio called it “problematic.” Jesus, he said, “brought a message of peace.” War should be a last resort. And while he granted that leaders may have access to information the public does not, he added: “It’s hard to cast this war as something that would be sponsored by the Lord.”

The military archbishop of the United States just rebuked the Secretary of Defense’s theology on national television two days before Easter. Broglio’s conservative bona fides made him, for years, the kind of bishop that the Trump administration and its Catholic allies believed they could count on. That coalition is fracturing, and Broglio’s interview reveals how deep the fracture runs.

Pope Leo XIV told the world on Palm Sunday that warmakers have hands “full of blood.” His Secretary of State declared openly that Trump’s war violates Catholic teaching. The White House rejected the pope’s rebuke and triggered a MAGA meltdown.

And now the most conservative bishop with direct authority over Catholic troops has walked onto a CBS set and told the country that the Iran war fails the test of justice — and that the Defense Secretary’s attempt to dress it in the language of Christ is an affront to the Gospel.

O’Keefe also asked Broglio about the Church’s work with troops suffering from “moral injury” — the psychological and spiritual damage that comes from participating in violence, even under lawful orders.

Broglio described a growing ministry within the military archdiocese dedicated to healing soldiers who carry the weight of what they have been asked to do. The Church, he said, offers structures for healing — not judgment. In a war the archbishop himself has now called unjust, that ministry will matter more than ever.

Archbishop Broglio closed the interview with a reflection on interfaith collaboration among military chaplains — Catholic, Jewish, Muslim — describing a “genuine spirit of collaboration” during Passover, Ramadan, and Holy Week.

The image is striking: at a moment when the commander-in-chief is invoking God to justify bombing campaigns, the people who actually minister to troops on the ground are working across faith lines to preserve something the war is destroying — the belief that God is on the side of peace.

Easter morning, millions of American Catholics will hear the proclamation that death has been conquered. Some of them will also hear Archbishop Broglio tell the nation that the war their government is waging in their name cannot be called just — and that the God their Defense Secretary invokes does not sponsor it.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with Archbishop Broglio and every Catholic in uniform who is being asked to fight a war that their own Church — from the pope to the military archbishop — has declared unjust.

We stand with the chaplains ministering to troops carrying the weight of moral injury, and with the families who wonder whether their government’s war is worth the lives it demands.

In a country where the Defense Secretary invokes Jesus to bless bombing campaigns, this community remains rooted in a faith that refuses to let the Gospel be conscripted. The message of the Resurrection is not a permission slip for violence. It is a demand for peace.

This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for something that their government and too many of their bishops refuse to offer: moral clarity grounded in the actual teaching of the Church, spoken without fear and without political calculation.

If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against a war that fails every test of justice — I am asking you to join us.

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