Amid controversy over religious-themed tattoos sported by President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a U.S. office of a Vatican lay institution for the Church in the Holy Land has expressed concern regarding the misuse of its historic insignia beyond strictly religious purposes.
The Jerusalem Cross and the phrase “Deus (lo) vult” (Latin for “God wills”), the elements of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, are symbols for an organization that “is set up to be a … visible presence of Christ and the people of Christ in the Holy Land,” and “of peace … of loving thy neighbor as thyself,” Deacon John Heyer, executive director of the order’s Eastern Lieutenancy, told OSV News Nov. 21.
The order — a lay institution under the protection of the Holy See with an estimated 30,000 members in close to 40 countries — aids the work of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, especially through efforts connected to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which encompasses Cyprus and Jordan as well.
But the Jerusalem Cross (a square cross inset with four smaller crosses) and particularly the Latin phrase that comprise the order’s insignia have drawn intense media scrutiny, as Hegseth — an evangelical Christian — has them tattooed on his chest and arm, respectively.
Hegseth is a 44-year-old combat veteran and former Fox News host. The “Deus vult” tattoo prompted Hegseth’s fellow National Guardsman Sgt. DeRicko Gaither to flag Hegseth as a possible “insider threat” during President Joe Biden’s inauguration. In a 2021 email to Maj. Gen. William Walker ahead of the event, Gaither described the image as “quite disturbing,” since the phrase “is associated with supremacist groups,” both white and Christian. Army policy bars members from having tattoos deemed extremist, indecent, sexist or racist.
Several experts have cited the use of “Deus vult” by extremist groups. The phrase — attributed to Pope Urban II ahead of the First Crusade in 1095, which sought to regain Christian control of the Holy Land from Muslim rule — has become an online hashtag, and has also appeared in anti-Muslim graffiti, with two Arkansas mosques defaced in 2016 with the text.
On Nov. 20, Heyer’s office clarified in its statement that “in today’s context, ‘Deus vult’ or ‘Deus lo vult’ (God wills) — once used to rally crusader knights in the Middle Ages to reclaim the Christian places in the Holy Land — reminds believers God alone has dominion over all and commands us to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.'”
The Jerusalem Cross itself “has been part of Christian iconography for more than a millennium and has been an inspiration to Christian pilgrims who no longer see it as a banner for crusades and war but of the passion and death of Jesus and his empty tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” said the release.
The cross “is really meant to be not a symbol of war at all, but really a symbol of the sacrifice of Christ as well as his Gospel message of love,” Heyer told OSV News.
