Military's Archbishop Declares That Troops Can Refuse Corona-vaccines

By Keneci Channel

The Archdiocese for the Military Services, created by the church in 1985, claims responsibility for 1.8 million Unted States service members and their families at 220 installations. Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to head the Archdiocese.

“No one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience,” said Broglio, in a statement Tuesday.

The Archbishop had previously supported President Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for U.S. troops, citing the church’s guidance that permits Catholics to receive even vaccines derived from fetal tissue, when no other vaccine option is available.

In his new statement, Broglio said that while he still encourages followers and troops to get vaccinated, some troops have questioned if the church’s permission to get vaccinated outweighed their own conscious objections to it. “It does not,” he wrote.

Broglio’s Tuesday letter begins with an explanation of how the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines that were tested using an “abortion-derived cell line”  are still not considered sinful by the Catholic church. “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith examined these moral concerns and judged that receiving these vaccines ‘does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion,’ and is therefore not sinful,” the letter reads.

While the Pope has deemed the vaccines to be not sinful, Broglio emphasized the “sanctity of conscience.” If the vaccine violates the sanctity of an individual’s conscience, they should not be forced to receive the vaccine.