The Latin Mass is back in fashion among America’s practicing Catholics, but will the Gesta Francorum sanctify Fox News host and Grenade Soap Company pitchman Pete Hegseth’s chances of becoming U.S. Secretary of Defense?

“Armed pilgrimages never end well,” says Byzantine historian Henry Hopwood-Phillips, director of the Daotong Strategy Group political consultancy in London.

“A barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the regions of the Orient,” was Pope Urban II’s justification for his 1095 dictum that launched the first of Europe’s seven major crusades, which in great part inspired Hegseth to ink his skin with the crusaders’ Jerusalem cross and the Vatican battle cry “Deus Vult” (God Wills It).

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