Catholic Church Fires Exorcist Who Called UFOs Demons

The Archdiocese of Washington removed Monsignor Stephen Rossetti from his post as exorcist last week. The archbishop said Rossetti's statements "gravely undermine" church teaching on demons and the devil.

Rossetti said in a May 29 Facebook video that "probably many, if not most, of these UFO sightings are in fact demons." He added that aliens, if they exist, do not possess people. The archdiocese did not specify which statements triggered the removal. Rossetti posted an online statement asking "forgiveness for any ways that I have not been faithful to the teachings of the Church's Magisterium."

The firing came as public interest in unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) has moved from fringe territory into mainstream conversation. The Pentagon released large swaths of UFO files in May with minimal context. Former President Barack Obama set off a media frenzy by saying in an interview that aliens are real, though he later tempered that take. "Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there," Obama posted on social media after a surprise visit to the set of Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day," out Friday. "I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"

Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, said in a recent podcast interview: "I don't think they're aliens. I think they're demons."

Christopher Baglow, who heads a science and religion initiative at the University of Notre Dame, said he was surprised by the firing given that Rossetti made clear in the video he was expressing a personal opinion. Baglow speculated other factors may have been involved. He noted the Catholic Church has long been open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. "Theologians have been speculating about this for centuries and the church has never ever taught one way or the other," Baglow said.

The Vatican itself has shown no hostility. Pope Leo XIV spoke last year to astronomy students about the "ancient light of distant galaxies" and the "mysterious joy" provoked by studying outer space. Some observers read those remarks as tacit speculation about life on other planets.

The idea of otherworldly beings visiting Earth is ancient. Diana Walsh Pasulka, a religion scholar at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said Greek philosophers in the time of Socrates and Aristotle talked about beings on other planets, calling it "the plurality of worlds."

Modern conceptions of UFOs developed after 1945, according to Jeffrey Kripal, a historian of religions at Rice University. "The flying saucer and the alien and the UFO – it's definitely a Cold War invasion narrative," he said.

That narrative explains why UAPs are often perceived as hostile. Yet the idea has also spawned religions that see extraterrestrials as benevolent or part of a divine plan. Scientology is the most famous example. Some adherents of the Nation of Islam believe its founder will inaugurate an apocalyptic return to Earth on a spaceship.

The International Raëlian Movement, founded in France in the 1970s, claims its founder Raël is a direct descendant of Yahweh, whom he visited on the planet of Elohim in 1975. Susan Palmer, a sociologist at Concordia University in Montreal who studies new religious movements, said Raëlism is the most sympathetic toward UFOs of the groups she has studied. "They're not interested in extraterrestrial wars," she said.

Walsh Pasulka said belief in UFOs may be one of the best things to happen to religion in a long time. "It's a blow to the secular, materialist worldview," she said.

Kripal, who heads Rice's Center for the Impossible archival collection of reported paranormal experiences, said he sees increasing openness to conversations about UFOs and the possibility they are not hostile. "People are reporting these experiences or these encounters with entities and they're religious through and through," he said. "My colleagues in the academy, they're really starting to listen in a different way."