Archbishop Broglio: Drug cartels must be stopped, but not with ‘violence outside the law’

CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2025 / 12:07 pm (CNA).

U.S. Military Services Archbishop Timothy Broglio is urging the country’s leaders to refrain from killing noncombatants while neutralizing violent drug cartels across the world.

The Trump administration throughout late 2025 has been launching aggressive strikes against suspected drug cartel operators in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. The White House has come under fire for what critics have claimed are indiscriminate and possibly extralegal airstrikes against alleged narco boats.

Human rights advocates have particularly criticized a Sept. 2 strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in which the military fired a second strike against two individuals who survived the initial strike.

In a Dec. 3 statement, Broglio acknowledged that “dismantling the powerful criminal networks responsible for the flow of illegal substances into our nation is a necessary and laudable task.”

Yet “questions have been raised about the use of military force in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and, as a nation, we must ensure that the use of military force is ethical and legal,” the prelate said. 

Broglio noted that methods to eradicate drugs and drug smugglers from the U.S. must be “moral” and in line with “just war theory,” which includes respect for “the dignity of each human person.” 

“No one can ever be ordered to commit an immoral act, and even those suspected of committing a crime are entitled to due process under the law,” he said. 

The intentional killing of noncombatants is forbidden in a just war, he said, and it would be “an illegal and immoral order to [deliberately] kill survivors on a vessel who pose no immediate lethal threat to our armed forces.”

Military forces possess a legitimate means of ensuring that noncombatants are not killed, Broglio pointed out: Vessels can be intercepted, boarded, and members of the Coast Guard can arrest suspected drug runners, after which they would be subject to due process in a court. 

“True justice is achieved through transparent legal procedures, accountability, and respect for life — not through violence outside the law,” the archbishop said. 

Broglio — who previously served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and has led the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, since 2008 — pointed out that the U.S. has “a long tradition of responding to injustice, liberating the oppressed, and leading the free world.” 

Leaders “cannot tarnish that reputation with questionable actions that fail to respect the dignity of the human person and the rule of law,” he said. 

Broglio urged leaders to refrain from asking soldiers to “engage in immoral actions.” He further noted that, as a military chaplain, his own investment in the matter stems from a tradition as old as the the country itself. 

“[F]rom the beginning,” he said, “George Washington wanted chaplains with his troops to tell him the truth.”

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