Phoenix was handed a great Easter present, according to City Councilman Sal DiCiccio. Phoenix not only restored prayer, but it strengthened it today by institutionalizing prayer at the City Council meetings.
“The best news is that not only did we bring prayer back, but we institutionalized prayer in a city ordinance,” DiCiccio said. “In the past prayer was an informal event at the City of Phoenix. Now what the council did was make it an ordinance making it much more difficult to ban or change it again. We may be the only city in the country that made prayer part of an ordinance.”
The ordinance will take effect on April 22, 2016. It returns an invocation to the start of Formal City Council meetings by using a Fire Department or Police Department chaplain to deliver a nondenominational invocation on a rotating basis.
The Mayor and Council voted to ban prayer at the City Council meetings. The vote to ban prayer was pushed by a satanic group out of Tucson. With the help of City Councilmembers Michael Nowakowski, Bill Gates, and Jim Waring and the faith community, the prayer ordinance was passed by a 6-2 vote.