European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen today confirmed she was converting to Satanism, doubling down on earlier plans to have eurocrats cancel Christmas.
A document published earlier this week instructed EU officials how to react "in the hypothetical and in any case highly unlikely event" that they should encounter a fellow EU staffer who was "differently backgrounded." At first it was criticised as just a well-meaning, slightly overzealous bit of wokery.
But now it appears part of deliberate plan to repudiate Europe's Christian heritage, as the German politician from the party now known as the Beelzebubian Democratic Union commanded the bloc’s 500 million citizens to pledge their undying allegiance to the Prince of Darkness.
At a press conference today flanked by candles and pentagrams, von der Leyen said Europe needed to “face up to its true religious roots and accept the Evil One into their hearts, following due consultation and in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.”
Von der Leyen then began mechanically chanting a string of nonsense words. While observers were originally concerned she was reciting the ancient verse that would finally summon the Great One Cthulhu from His ancient realm of R'lyeh, she was later revealed to simply have been reading out the agendas of the next three college meetings.
After von der Leyen’s dramatic intervention, a commission spokesperson was at pains to stress that no definitive decision had been taken on the controversial plans, which could overturn centuries of pretty much almost entirely peaceful cohabitation among Christians, atheists, Jews, and Muslims on the continent.
The spokesperson explained that a fully-costed impact assessment to be published within the coming months would consider the relative benefits and drawbacks of a number of options, including imposing occult practices by means of binding legislation, a high-level roundtable enabling the sharing of Dark Arts best practice, and Doing Nothing.
A recent Eurobarometer poll showed that 87% of European citizens were ready to accept the authority of Lucifer Himself as long as they could still watch Love Actually while consuming vast amounts of chocolate truffles.