Face the Nation: Isaacman, Broglio, reporters panel

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the senior Catholic prelate for all U.S. military personnel, declared on Easter Sunday that the American war with Iran likely fails the Catholic Church's Just War Theory criteria, a judgment with direct consequences for the hundreds of thousands of Catholic service members under his pastoral care.

Speaking on Face the Nation with CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O'Keefe filling in for host Margaret Brennan, Broglio said plainly: "Under just war theory, [the war with Iran] is not [justified]... I would line myself up with Pope Leo, who has been urging for negotiation." His reasoning centered on pre-emption: the conflict, as he characterized it, amounts to "compensating for a threat before the threat is actually realized" on nuclear arms, a distinction that undermines the just cause requirement at the heart of Church teaching.

The practical stakes of that judgment are immediate. Broglio stated that Catholic service members are not morally bound to obey every order in a conflict that fails just war criteria. He also called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's invocation of Jesus Christ to justify the war "problematic," placing the nation's most senior military chaplain in direct theological opposition to the civilian head of the Pentagon. Broglio acknowledged the diplomatic difficulty of identifying negotiating partners on the Iranian side, but pressed the point that lives are being lost on both sides: American troops and Iranian civilians.

Broglio has served as Archbishop for the Military Services, USA since 2008 and previously served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2022 to 2025. He was ordained Archbishop by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

The same broadcast also captured a live milestone in space exploration. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate in December 2025, told O'Keefe the Artemis II crew was closer to the moon than any humans had been in decades, preparing for a six-hour flyby of the far side of the moon scheduled for April 6. Isaacman called the mission "the first time we've ever had humans onboard the Orion spacecraft" and described it as "the opening act in a series of missions that will send astronauts to and from the moon with great frequency." The primary in-flight objective was collecting data from the ECLS, the Environmental Control and Life Support system aboard Orion, needed to certify the capsule for future crewed lunar landings. A brief communication dropout roughly 50 minutes after launch had been resolved without lasting concern.

Isaacman, who founded Shift4 Payments and Draken International before commanding SpaceX's Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions, spoke with the authority of someone who has personally flown in orbit.

The reporter panel, comprising Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, David Sanger of The New York Times, and Jeff Mason of Bloomberg, joined retired Gen. Frank McKenzie and Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore on what became one of the more substantive Easter Sunday broadcasts in recent memory. The week ahead carries substantial pressure points on all fronts: the legal and political question of congressional authorization for the Iran conflict, the trajectory of NASA's budget as the administration leans further into commercial partnerships, and the institutional weight of a sitting military archbishop publicly questioning the moral legitimacy of an active war.