Timothy P. Broglio
Timothy Paul Broglio was born December 22, 1951, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He earned a B.A. in Classics from Boston College and a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and trained for Vatican diplomacy at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Cleveland on May 19, 1977.
Broglio spent his early career in the Holy See's diplomatic corps: secretary at the nunciatures in Ivory Coast and Paraguay, then chief of cabinet to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, through 2001. In February 2001 he was named Apostolic Nuncio to the Dominican Republic and Apostolic Delegate to Puerto Rico, and was consecrated an archbishop by Pope John Paul II on March 19, 2001.
On November 19, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI named Broglio the fourth Archbishop for the Military Services, USA (AMS); he was installed January 25, 2008, and continues in that office as of mid-2026. AMS is a personal, functional (non-territorial) archdiocese providing Catholic pastoral care to U.S. armed-forces personnel, veterans in VA facilities, and government employees overseas. Broglio served as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from November 2022 until the close of the November 2025 fall plenary, when Archbishop Paul S. Coakley succeeded him. He is generally regarded as doctrinally conservative and orthodox.
Deeds-based, Broglio's record on the Traditional Latin Mass is genuinely mixed rather than hostile or wholeheartedly favorable. On the positive side, when Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes on July 16, 2021, Broglio took a comparatively permissive line for a personal archdiocese: priests already offering the 1962 Missal within AMS were allowed to continue, and AMS carries a 'green' (no-suppression) classification on the Traditionis Custodes tracker. He did not shut down existing military-base TLMs, and he is broadly conservative and orthodox in doctrine and moral teaching.
On the negative side, his most consequential act touching Tradition predates Traditionis Custodes: his June 6, 2017 refusal to accept priests dedicated exclusively to the older rite as military chaplains. By analogizing the Traditional Latin Mass to a separate (Eastern) rite requiring bi-ritual faculties, he effectively closed the door to FSSP/ICKSP-style traditional chaplains serving communities like Fort Hood, even amid an acute Catholic chaplain shortage. That is a structural obstacle to Tradition taking root in the military, not merely a neutral stance.
The unique jurisdictional geometry of AMS deepens the ambiguity: a base TLM can fall under both AMS and the surrounding diocese, and Broglio has not published a clear accommodation or exemption framework resolving that overlap. The net picture is a conservative prelate who protects conscience (notably against the COVID vaccine mandate) and lets existing TLMs stand, but who has not affirmatively championed the traditional Mass and has actively limited the pipeline of priests who would celebrate it. He is best classified as a mixed record, not a reliable friend of Tradition.