A provocative satanic monument approved for a city-run veterans’ park in Minnesota has elicited strong opposition from local Christians and other groups who say the offensive object has no business in a public park.

In May, the Satanic Temple received permission to place the monument—a black cube inscribed with pentagrams with an upside-down soldier’s helmet on top—in in Belle Plaine’s Veterans Memorial Park, as city officials said that the application for the monument meets the criteria of city policy.

Protesters have held prayer rallies in the park, insisting that the monument not be erected. One of the demonstrators, Susie Collins, said that the monument “is not the message of life and love, it is the message of death and decay.”

A local Catholic pastor, Father Brian Lynch, said that it “feels like it’s being imposed on us from the outside,” referring to efforts by the Massachusetts-based Satanic Temple to have the monument erected in Belle Plains.

On Saturday, more than 150 people attended an hourlong prayer rally organized a Catholic nonprofit organization. One participant carried a sign that read: “Satan belongs in hell, not Veterans Memorial Park.”

Satanism, a fringe movement comprising mostly young males, is too small to be demographically relevant. One of the largest and most active groups, the Satanic Temple, claims an international membership of only around 10,000s.

Editors commentary >     Anyone who doesn’t see a pattern in this madness should give your head a shake! Whenever the militant atheists don’t get their way they send in the fringe lunatics to put forward this idiocy. If your on the fringe and want to be relevant, organize groups that are so extreme that the fringe now becomes “moderate” this has been the game leftists have perfected over the last 40 years. It’s pathetic!!