Man prays to Satan at an Iowa city council, pastor rushes to 'reverse the curse'

An Iowa man caused a furore when he kicked off a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan. Another pastor wanted to undo the "curse" immediately, but that spun off a whole new debate about the right timing to do so as per the meeting agenda. The incident happened on Tuesday night (Oct. 6) when Ottumwa resident, Satanist, and former city council member Matt Dalbey got on the podium to read an invocation before starting a routine meeting of the council.

Notably, the Ottumwa City Council passed an official invocation policy on January 20, 2026, under which any resident can register to deliver an opening invocation, regardless of faith or belief system.

The prayer to Satan said at Ottumwa City Council

"Thank you, Mayor, Council. Let us pray. Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old," Dalbey started off, reading a prayer commonly used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa.

“Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorisations...Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is done. Hail Satan,” he finished.

A pastor rushed to "reverse the curse"

Rick Bick, a pastor, rushed to "reverse that curse put on the city", saying, "That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here." However, city councillor Cara Galloway told him that it should be done at the end.

Rick insisted, "It needs to be done now, OK." He said that Dalbey's words "Hail Satan" and the dark god put a curse on the city, and "we need to just stop and reverse it."

Galloway denied his request and told him, "We are at the consent agenda. I’m sorry, but it’s time to move forward. The invocation happened.”

At this moment, Mayor Benjamin Foote intervened and said, “I’m going to ask right now that we do a moment of silence to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time.”

City councillor reminded everyone that this is why she did not support invocations

Galloway kept her head up and her arms crossed during the moment of silence. Towards the end of the meeting, she expressed her displeasure with the decision to allow an invocation at the city council. "Opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own, " adding, "responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope", and this is "exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it."

When the resolution to permit invocations was passed on January 20, Galloway was the only person who voted against it. She predicted this exact scenario at that time, saying that Satanists could come and read a prayer and that everyone would have to be OK with that.