The Catholic archbishop of the U.S. military services said it “would be morally acceptable to disobey” orders if troops considered them against their conscience as the Trump administration aims to acquire Greenland, intervenes in Venezuela and readies troops for a possible deployment to Minnesota.
Timothy P. Broglio is the latest public figure to suggest that American soldiers could disobey their orders. His comments also underscored the mounting concern being voiced by the first American pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, as well as his top cardinals in the United States, over the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
“Greenland is a territory of Denmark,” Broglio said in a BBC interview Sunday. “… It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”
Asked whether he was “worried” about the military personnel in his pastoral care, Broglio replied: “I am obviously worried because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”
“It would be very difficult for a soldier or a marine or a sailor to by himself disobey an order … but strictly speaking, he or she would be, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order, but that’s perhaps putting that individual in an untenable situation — and that’s my concern,” he added.
Broglio, an American, has since 2007 served as the Vatican’s senior cleric overseeing the D.C.-based archdiocese of the U.S. military. He is the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and is a known conservative.
Trump is set to arrive in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum on Wednesday where European leaders are preparing to discuss his demands to take over Greenland and make it part of the U.S. — demands that are transforming the annual gathering of the world’s elite into an emergency diplomatic summit.
Members of the military take an oath to the Constitution, not the president. They are obligated to not follow “manifestly unlawful orders,” but such situations are rare and legally fraught, The Washington Post reported, and military personnel can face punishment by court-martial procedures for failing to obey lawful orders.
The Pentagon in November announced an investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), a prominent Trump critic and combat veteran, after he took part in a video alongside five other Democrats reminding U.S. service members of their duty under military law to disobey illegal orders. The move was criticized by Trump at the time as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” and the other lawmakers said this month they were now under investigation by his administration for the video.
Kelly filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to reverse Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s letter of censure and effort to potentially demote him in rank.
Broglio’s comments echoed concerns made in a joint statement Monday by the three highest-ranking U.S. Catholic archbishops, warning that “the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world” had been thrown into question by a resurgence in the use or threat of military force, including in Venezuela and Greenland.
“The events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland have raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace,” wrote Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of D.C. and Joseph Tobin of Newark.
In the days after the U.S. operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro, and after Trump said he was now “in charge” of that nation, the pope insisted on respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty.
In a Jan. 9 meeting with diplomats in Vatican City, Leo, while not mentioning the U.S. directly, decried a new era in which multilateralism is being replaced by “a zeal for war” and where “peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion.”
Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.
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