WASHINGTON — Archbishop Timothy Broglio presided at the funeral of Michael Grant Cahill, the only civilian killed at Fort Hood in 2009. On Monday, the archbishop for the U.S. military told Catholic soldiers that if they are assigned to the firing squad that will execute the man who killed Cahill, they should ask to be excused.
“As I would in the case of a procured abortion, I oblige any Catholics assigned to the firing squad to request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church,” Broglio said in a statement from the Archdiocese for the Military Services. The statement turns the backlash against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Dec. 3 execution of Nidal Hasan, which EH reported last week, into a directive for soldiers.
Broglio did not dispute the crime. Hasan killed 13 people at the Texas base in 2009 and was sentenced to death in 2013. The archbishop restated the Church’s opposition to capital punishment and then turned to the broadcast. “Do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries?” he asked, and he raised the “moral injury” the firing squad might suffer, the effect on “the young and impressionable,” and the picture of a man in a wheelchair being shot, broadcast to the world. Hegseth has said the execution must be public “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” CBS News reported.
The pushback now reaches the president’s own side. House Speaker Mike Johnson told CBS News some Republicans worry a video “would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists” and said he would take their concerns to the White House. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, “I would expect this from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America.” Only one Republican in Congress, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, has publicly backed the stream, CBS said. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, said he would not watch. The archbishop’s full text is on the archdiocese’s website.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago called the plan “performative barbarism,” Al Jazeera reported. The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, called it “unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle,” and Pope Leo XIV declared the death penalty “inadmissible” without naming Hasan, according to CBS.
The administration’s own position keeps moving. Trump said Friday that he approved the livestream, “Absolutely, I did,” then said he “wasn’t involved in that decision.” On Saturday he said, “There are two thoughts: don’t show it and show it,” and that he would decide. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the plan on “Face the Nation,” saying “no one has to watch it.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to CBS’s request for comment on Broglio’s statement. Nothing in the coverage reviewed says how a soldier would request to be excused, or who has the last word on the broadcast, Hegseth or the president.
