April 18 2026, 08:15 
We have seen an unusual public debate as of late between Hegseth and the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV.
Since taking office in 2025, Pete Hegseth has conducted monthly Christian worship services at the Department of Defense. At the first of these on May 21, 2025, Hegseth’s spiritual advisor, Brooks Potteiger, a Tennessee pastor in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, delivered a sermon, which also included the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer and the singing of “Amazing Grace,” “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” and the “Doxology.”
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“There’s a temptation to think that you’re actually in control and responsible for final outcomes, especially for those who issue the commands and do the aiming and the shooting,” preached Potteiger, “But you are not ultimately in charge of the world.”
Citing a verse from Matthew 10, Potteiger told the gathered leaders of the US military: “If our Lord is sovereign even over the sparrow’s fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles… Jesus has the final say over all of it.”
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Well, less than one year after Potteiger’s Pentagon sermon, a U.S. Tomahawk missile tore through the bodies of schoolchildren, educators, and parents of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran. To date, neither Hegseth nor Trump has taken responsibility, and they have not apologized for the strike on the school and the massive loss of life. Hegseth merely stated during a news conference that “we do not target civilians.”
Based on Potter’s words, though, we can conclude that the pastor and Hegseth’s Christian Lord directed the missile to fall on the school.
Throughout this war, Hegseth has continually described U.S. military actions as divinely sanctioned. He has consistently invoked “God’s almighty providence,” and he has voiced his conviction that God fights on the side of the U.S. military.
He has also brashly boasted that under his control, the military does not operate under “stupid rules of engagement,” such as the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements. He has threatened to give “no quarter” to Iranian leaders, whom he has called “barbaric savages.”
During a news conference the Monday following Easter, Hegseth peddled the rescue of a crew member from a downed F-15 fighter jet in southern Iran as if his survival came directly from a page of the Christian scriptures on the Resurrection.
“Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday,” he began, “hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
He has called on the people of the United States to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.” His belief system and lust for blood were on full display at the March 25, 2026, Pentagon worship service, when he prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
This prayer provoked a direct admonition from Pope Leo XIV, who spoke as thousands of U.S. troops headed for the Middle East on Palm Sunday. In his sermon, the Pope reiterated that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.
Hegseth obviously dismissed the Pope’s rebuke, as he does many of the traditions and practices of the Roman Church.
Hegseth follows an obscure Calvinist wing of evangelical Christianity that is rooted in a belief in predestination. Thus, God is the director of all things and all actions. So, does this include the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran?
At the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, 2026, Hegseth glorified military warriors in the language of his Protestant faith: “The willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of one’s country is born in one thing: a deep and abiding belief in God’s love for us and his promise of eternal life,” Hegseth said. “The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.”
How is Hegseth’s rhetoric any different from that of radical Islamists who promise 72 virgins and entry into Islamic heaven to all men, including martyrs in the case of war?
Hegseth’s crusade
Pete Hegseth prides himself on showing off his bare body not only to reveal his fitness but also to display his array of Christian-themed tattoos. His body is a veritable gallery of symbols and expressions.
He has Deus Vult tattooed across his right biceps. This Latin phrase means “God wills it.” It derives from a chant by the Christian Crusaders who responded to Pope Urban II’s 1095 call to march to the Holy Land and reconquer it for Christendom.
Hegseth has emblazoned the Jerusalem cross, also known as the Crusader Cross, on his chest. It is a square cross with a smaller square cross in each of the four surrounding quadrants.
Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade in Clermont, France, to “liberate” Jerusalem from Muslims. In the summer of 1096, as the crusade began, soldiers murdered several thousand Jews along their way in the lands along the Rhine River. They also looted and destroyed their homes. As the Crusaders stated, “Why should we go off to attack the unbelievers in the Holy Land and leave the unbelievers in our midst untouched?”
They accused Jews of being treacherous auxiliaries of Muslims. Pope Urban II said, “Let us first avenge ourselves on them [the Jews] and exterminate them from among the nations so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered, or let them adopt our faith.”
When the Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099, they pillaged Muslim buildings and killed thousands. The massacre of the Muslim population of Jerusalem reached epic proportions. In addition, the invaders burned the synagogue on the Temple Mount to the ground with many Jews inside.
One Crusader, an eyewitness to the event, wrote: “Men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. It was a just and splendid judgment by God that this place would be filled with the blood of the unbelievers.”
The Crusades lasted from 1040 to 1350. By 1204, however, as the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt drove them out of Palestine and Syria, the tide began to turn against the Western European invaders.
So, why do we read in the history books about the “Christian Crusaders” rather than the “radical Christian terrorists”? I ask the same in reference to the Christian “Inquisition.” Because its terror was far more than a mere “inquiry.”
Hegseth also has a “Chi-Rho” tattoo: the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ. It is a very early example of a Christogram (letters formed into a monogram that convey the core of the Christian religion).
In addition, Hegseth has another tattooed cross, this one with a sword, that references a verse in the Gospel of Matthew in Jesus’s words: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Across Hegseth’s elbow is inscribed “Yeshua,” Jesus’s name in Hebrew.
Along with his Christian symbols, Hegseth has included American ones as well: “We the People” from the U.S. Constitution’s opening phrase; “1775,” the year of the American Revolution, in Roman numerals; a “Join, or Die” snake from the American Revolution; an American flag with an AR-15 rifle; a pair of crossed muskets; a circle of stars; and a patch of his regiment, the 187th Infantry.
Another American who led during war, Abraham Lincoln, admitted forthrightly that he was not aware of God’s role in the hostilities that divided our nation. In his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, he did not reflect on which army – the Union or the Confederacy – possessed superior strength or which side God supported.
He did, though, recognize that both sides fervently believed they were following God’s will, and that he, as President of the United States, a mere mortal, could not know which side was correct.
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other,” he said of the two sides. “Let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”
While the historical Jesus was a righteous prophet who promoted love, peace, understanding, and acceptance of differences, many of his followers have misused his message to condone some of the worst evils imaginable, including religious wars, forced conversions, theft of land and resources, colonization, and murder.
Donald Trump went down this misguided path when he threatened to end an entire civilization if Iran did not agree to his terms for a ceasefire and eventual peace deal.
In his Palm Sunday sermon, Pope Leo XIV characterized Jesus as the “King of Peace” who opposes conflict. He cited Isaiah 1:15, stating, “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”
Pope Leo said Christ “did not arm himself, or defend himself, or fight any war” but instead “revealed the gentle face of God, who always rejects violence.”
One doesn’t have to be a practicing Catholic to understand and support the Pope’s words.
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