The Vatican on UFO
Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Vatican expert on exorcism, has made several public pronouncements on the UFO phenomenon. He advises that the Vatican is receiving much information on UFO and alien contact, from its nuncios in various countries. Monsignor Balducci is on a Vatican commission looking into such encounters, and how to cope with them. The Catholic Church has historically demonized many new phenomena that were poorly understood, but Monsignor Balducci states: "These encounters are not demonic, they are not due to psychological impairment, and they are not a case of entity attachment; we are closely following and studying this phenomenon." He continues:
"We find no direct reference to extraterrestrial life in the Bible, but neither does it exclude the existence of such
"The distance between the angels -- pure spiritual beings -- and us -- beings of spirit and matter, body and soul -- is too large
"Between us and the angels, another life form probably exists -- beings with a physical body but one more perfect than ours and which influences the soul less in its intelligent acts and intentions
"The relationship between mind and matter in such beings might be different than in our case
"If they are indeed superior to us, they can help, support, and protect us in spiritual development; they may have done so in the past"
See notes on an interview with Michael Hesemann in MUFON UFO Journal, June 2004, 434, pg.19.
The current director of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. José Gabriel Funes, a Jesuit priest and astronomer, when interviewed for the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano in May 2008 gave this opinion: "The search for forms of extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God. Intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space, just as there are multiple forms of life on earth. Some aliens could even be free from original sin."
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7399661.stm and http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12628; also, http://www.vatican.va.