There’s no official count of Church membership in Europe (or anywhere else), but “Pastafarian” Facebook pages from countries across the Continent have accumulated thousands of likes while, country by country, FSM members have waged and even won legal battles for the privileges enjoyed by other religions. Along the way, something funny has happened to a movement founded in large part to critique organized religion: It’s gotten organized, and has taken on both the trappings and some of the social functions of a real religion.

FSM has its own iconography (the deity features, in addition to spaghetti, two meatballs and a pair of eyes) as well as a Sabbath (Friday, because “our god was faster than the other gods, and he finished with the creation of Earth earlier”). The flagship German church, in Brandenburg, features a weekly mass modeled on the Catholic celebration, but with noodles and beer in place of bread and wine. FSM officiants even conduct weddings in several countries; this year, New Zealand became the first to legally recognize these marriages.

In Austria, a onetime church leader named Niko Alm started a tradition of “religious headgear” (an overturned colander), winning the right to wear it in his ID photo.