The Ottumwa, Iowa, City Council’s regular meeting on October 6, 2026, opened with an invocation that quickly drew attention online. The city’s official YouTube channel posted the meeting after Mayor Ben Foote called the 5:30 p.m. session to order and invited those who wished to participate in the invocation to stand.
The scheduled speaker began with a direct appeal to a “dark father.”
“Let us pray. Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times.”
The speaker then urged those in the room to “embrace the luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old,” while calling on people to judge others by “concrete actions” instead of “arbitrary social norms,” and to hold “only to that which is demonstrably true.”
The invocation ended with a line that set off the later confrontation: “It is done. Hail Satan.” The Pledge of Allegiance followed immediately.
The city’s own invocation schedule lists the October 6 speaker as Matthew Dalbey, with the organization listed as “None.” Dalbey is also listed on the schedule for September 1 and November 3. The schedule is posted on the city’s website.
The clip spread after Libs of TikTok posted about the meeting and tagged Ottumwa’s official account.
The invocation drew pushback during the meeting. A man identified as Rick called on city leaders to “reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” referring to the invocation’s references to a “dark god” and its closing declaration.
Cara Galloway objected to the request, telling Foote, “Yeah, Mayor, this should be done at EER at the end.”
Rick pushed back. “I appreciate what Miss Galloway is saying, but that was a curse put on a city when he said, ‘Hail Satan’ and ‘oh dark god.’ Most of you know that, and we need to just stop and reverse it,” he said. “It needs to be done now.”
Foote then called for 30 seconds of silence so those in attendance could pray or reflect. Galloway immediately interrupted, saying, “No, we are at consent agenda. I’m sorry, but it’s time to move forward. The invocation happened.”
Foote continued: “As the mayor of Ottumwa and the one running this meeting, I’m going to ask right now that we have a moment of silence to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time, and then we will move to the consent agenda.”
The official meeting recording and the city’s posted schedule provide the central details: the October 6 meeting, the listed speaker, the invocation, the immediate Pledge of Allegiance, and the dispute that followed. The exchange raises a basic question of local leadership: how should officials respond when a government meeting opens with an invocation that includes an explicit reference to Satan and an attendee asks them to address it?
Source: The Gateway Pundit
The City of Ottumwa, Iowa, opened its Tuesday evening council meeting with a shocking invocation addressed to the “dark father” and ending with the declaration, “Hail Satan.”
pic.twitter.com/3UrCwDrJPe— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) October 7, 2026