“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.”
From OSV News:
Just hours after his audience with Pope Leo XIV, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services issued a strong and lengthy statement Oct. 12 against the planned livestreamed execution by firing squad of Ford Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, calling it a “public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries.”
In his statement, Archbishop Broglio, former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and head of the military archdiocese since 2008, called upon “all men and women of good will to ask that this decision be reconsidered,” and encouraged any Catholics involved to disassociate with the proceedings.
“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,” Archbishop Broglio said.
As a U.S. military base, Fort Hood is under the pastoral jurisdiction of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA.
President Donald Trump recently approved the execution by firing squad of Hasan, the former U.S. Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Oct. 8 in an interview with the pro-Trump TV outlet Real America’s Voice News that the execution would take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3, and that it would be made public.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” said Hegseth, who uses the moniker “secretary of war” since Trump signed an executive order last year adding the “Department of War” as a secondary, ceremonial title for the Department of Defense.
In his statement, Archbishop Broglio — who emphasized that he “had the sad duty of presiding and preaching at the funeral of Michael Grant Cahill, the only civilian killed in that attack” — renewed his “heartfelt sympathy” to relatives of the Fort Hood attack victims. He said Hasan’s attack “disregarded the dignity of the human person.” But on the cusp of this public execution, he said, “the dignity of the human person is again at stake.”
Archbishop Broglio called it his “duty” to “express my disapproval of what is proposed regarding the execution of the terrorist Hasan in the Archdiocese entrusted to my spiritual care to be done by those for whose salvation I have been constituted as the Archbishop for the Military Services, USA.”
