The U.S. military’s top Catholic cleric and former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stated April 3 that the joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is not a just war.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, made the remark during a Good Friday interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” to be aired on Easter Sunday. As the military archbishop, he oversees the Catholic priests who serve as U.S. military chaplains.
Asked whether the Iran war is a just one according to Catholic teaching, Archbishop Broglio answered: “I would think under the just war theory it is not.”
He explained that, “while there was a threat with nuclear arms,” the war is “compensating for a threat before the threat is actually realized.”
Archbishop Broglio added, “I would line myself up with Pope Leo, who has been urging for negotiation.”
The archbishop also mentioned that, after numerous deadly strikes on Iranian leaders, it is difficult to tell with whom the U.S. can negotiate.
“And that is a problem,” he said, “but in the meantime, lives are being lost both there and also among our troops.”
Asked later in the interview about Pope Leo XIV’s recent statement that God “does not listen” to the prayers of those “who wage war,” Archbishop Broglio nodded and recalled another Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, forcefully proclaiming during his 1965 speech to the United Nations, “War never again!”
Echoing another recent statement of Pope Leo’s, that God cannot be “used” to “justify” war, the archbishop expressed concern about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s rhetoric invoking God in connection with the Iran war.
“It’s a little bit problematic,” Archbishop Broglio said, “in the sense that the Lord Jesus certainly brought a message of peace. And also I think war is always a last resort.”
He said that perhaps the U.S. received intelligence that made them feel war “was the only choice they had,” saying that, if so, “I’m not making a judgment about that because I really don’t know.”
“But I do think that it’s hard to cast this war as something that would be sponsored by the Lord,” the archbishop concluded.
Archbishop Broglio expressed sympathy for U.S. service members who may worry about receiving orders that run counter to their consciences, but explained that believing the Iran war is unjust does not technically constitute grounds for formal conscientious objection.
“The way conscientious objection is set up in the United States military, you cannot object to a specific war or a specific action,” he said. Rather, you can only object to “war” itself, he explained when asked how he would counsel service members who come to him with qualms of conscience about the war.
“So I would think it depends on where you are in the chain of command,” he continued. A service member must generally obey orders, unless he receives an order that is “clearly immoral, and then he would probably have to speak to his chaplain [and] to his chain of command,” the archbishop said.
He speculated that “generals or admirals” might “have space to perhaps say, ‘Can we look at this a different way?’”
On the other hand, he said, “having spoken to some of them, too, they’re also in the same dilemma. So I guess my counsel would be to do as little harm as you can and to try and preserve innocent lives.”
As Zeale News reported, when President Donald Trump threatened to take military action to obtain Greenland from Denmark late last year, Archbishop Broglio stated that “taking it by force, when we already have treaties there that allow for military installation in Greenland, it doesn’t seem necessary, it doesn’t seem acceptable to invade a friendly nation.”
He also addressed concerns about service members’ consciences at the time, making clear that “it would be morally acceptable to disobey” an immoral order.
Readers can find Archbishop Broglio’s full interview here.