Saviours from the Heavens?

On 3 June, 2026, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a Catholic priest of the diocese of Syracuse, New York, and founder of the St Michael Centre for Spiritual Renewal, was suspended from his role as an exorcist in the Archdiocese of Washington by Cardinal Robert McElroy. In his letter, Cardinal McElroy stated that the reason for cutting ties was due to statements made by Rossetti ‘linking UFOs to demonic presences’ that ‘gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism’.

There has been no further elaboration of the Cardinal’s decision, but it seems to relate to comments made by Rossetti in an interview shared with his sizeable following on Youtube in which he maintained that reported sightings of UFOs, or contact with supposed aliens, were more likely to represent manifestations of demonic activity than evidence of extraterrestrial visitation from distant planets. In making these claims, Rossetti was careful to point out that the official teaching of the Catholic church allows for the possibility of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe. However, in his personal opinion, this is not the most plausible explanation for UFO phenomena.

Otherworldly entities, whether supernatural or extra-terrestrial, have been a staple of the human imagination since the dawn of recorded history. Once upon a time we may have told stories about angels, fairies, or demons; now that we live in a technological age, we tell tales of aliens from galaxies far, far away. Of course, 90% of supposed UFO sightings can be straightforwardly attributed to rather more mundane causes, such as drones, weather balloons, or optical effects. But what about the remainder? Some people maintain that UFO encounters are best understood not in terms of extraterrestrials visiting earth in spaceships, but inter-dimensional beings who appear to us in the form of what we have come to call ‘aliens’. This view, going back to the 1950s and 60s, was widely popularised with the publication of Jaques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia in 1969. At the same time, the further claim that such inter-dimensional beings are demonic in origin gained lasting influence with the publication of Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr Seraphim Rose in 1975.

In other words, Fr Rossetti’s opinion is not exactly novel but a view shared by many, including the Vice President of the United States, and numerous Christians struggling to understand the reasons for his suspension. As one puzzled commentator put it, “Isn’t this is basically what most exorcists think?”

In contemporary popular culture, aliens tend to be portrayed either as saviours from the heavens or malignant forces bent on the conquest, enslavement or destruction of humanity. The aliens in Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster movie, Disclosure Day, conform to the archetype of well-intentioned, but misunderstood, extraterrestrials who just want to help us – if we’d only let them. Moreover, they not only possess technology far more advanced than our own, but are also morally more enlightened than we are. Humans, by comparison, are portrayed in the film as cruel savages.

It’s a classic Spielberg adventure in many respects. I certainly found it enjoyable to watch, even if many critics decided it wasn’t quite up to standard. Entertainment value aside, what I found more interesting, and troubling, relates to some of the theological motifs in the film, which – whether intentional or not – are many.

In one scene, the character of Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City TV weather reporter played by Emily Blunt, suddenly acquires the ability to speak in foreign languages of which she has no prior knowledge, following a visit from a bright red Northern Cardinal that flies into her apartment and perches meaningfully on the edge of her kitchen table during breakfast.

Speaking of Cardinals, one can’t help wondering who benefits from the decision to shut down one of the church’s most well-known and successful exorcists.

The interaction with the flame-coloured bird – we later learn that the aliens appear to us in animal form so that we aren’t frightened by them – could plausibly be read as an allusion to the Holy Spirit, traditionally portrayed by tongues of fire and as a dove. In the well known bible story recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, a multi-national crowd of bystanders bear witness to the astonishing experience of hearing the Apostles speak to each of them in their own language, a trope that is played out by Emily Blunt’s character in the film on numerous occasions.

However, whilst the preternatural ability to speak unknown languages (xenoglossy) is indeed one of the traditional ‘gifts of the spirit’, it is also one of the classic signs of demonic possession.

The difference between these superficially similar phenomena is determined by their source. Is the gift from the God that is love, or a manifestation of the dark energy that is deception? The answer to this question depends on whether the person is aware and in control of the fact that they are speaking in another language, or whether it is involuntary and they don’t even realise they’re doing it. In the film, Margaret is clearly unaware of what she is saying, and has no memory of the exchange after the moment passes. Far from retaining her own agency whilst under the influence, she is an unwitting mouthpiece for the aliens, by whom she is, to all intents and purposes, possessed. Ignoring what we would now consider to be the obvious safeguarding concerns, we later discover that she was somehow programmed by them as a child. Furthermore, the ability to control a person’s mind by means of a piece of captured alien technology that can seemingly do anything features as a significant plot device within the story.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. Disclosure Day portrays the aliens as benevolent. The baddies are the shadowy government agencies who have been trying to cover up evidence of alien contact ever since the alleged Roswell Incident of 1947, in order to protect the populous from knowledge they would not be able to handle. But are the aliens really trying to help us, or is it all a massive deception?

Fr Rossetti would no doubt point out that the notion of aliens as saviours contradicts the Christian revelation of salvation through Jesus Christ alone, and Seraphim Rose argued that UFO phenomena were a deliberate ploy to lead Christians astray. We don’t have to accept the Christian claims about Jesus, of course – indeed, anyone who is not a Christian will be only too happy to dismiss them – but those who do profess the faith revealed through Christ must surely reject any notion of saviour figures from outer space. In the film, disclosure of alien contact restores the human capacity for empathy and averts an impending nuclear war. Presumably we are meant to think this is a good thing. But then, the antichrist is traditionally presented as one who initially appears as a prophet of peace, thus achieving dominance over humanity. In spite of what may be inferred from some of the religious themes running through the film, aliens are not, and cannot be, our saviours. Any appearance to the contrary is just that, a deception that prevents us from seeing the truth. Like the aliens in Disclosure Day, demons don’t generally appear to us as demons. That would be entirely self-defeating. The whole point of a demon is to be an agent of deception, exerting a negative influence without our knowing it.

I don’t know whether UFOs – or, for that matter, demons – ‘really’ exist, but in both cases we have to accept that the experiences people report are certainly very real to them. I am generally sceptical concerning matters about which I have no firsthand experience, whilst keeping an open mind regarding the possibility that reality may be a lot more interesting than we generally assume. Thus, I find it quite reasonable to suppose that we are not alone in the universe. Given its unimaginably vast dimensions, it is statistically probable that it contains other lifeforms and possibly even technologically advanced civilisations. There are estimated to be a billion earth-like planets in this galaxy alone: surely the chances of life existing elsewhere are pretty high? I have no problem whatsoever with that line of reasoning. I just don’t think it is the most plausible hypothesis to explain accounts of UFO sightings and alien encounters.

We may not be alone, but it doesn’t therefore follow that we have been visited by aliens from distant planets, not least because the sheer vastness of space militates against the likelihood of extra-terrestrial visitation. Even if it were possible to travel at or anywhere near the speed of light, it would still take several years to reach the nearest planets potentially capable of supporting life. Alternatively, as long as they could avoid being crushed by the gravitational collapse within a black hole, intergalactic voyagers could theoretically travel through wormholes in the space-time continuum. However, neither light-speed travel, nor wormholes – for which there is as yet no observable evidence that they even exist – seem any more likely than the suggestion that we are dealing with inter-dimensional beings.

It is interesting to note that reports of close encounters with aliens seem to repeat the same oddly unconvincing patterns. Why does such advanced technology keep breaking down? Why do so many sightings describe the occupants of crashed spaceships standing around, aimlessly picking up rocks or sticks? Why do they need to conduct intimate examinations on so many purported abductees? Why, in other words, are the accounts of UFO phenomena so absurd and pointless? How are these observations consistent with the idea that we are dealing with beings from civilisations greatly more advanced than our own? Isn’t it just as – if not more – reasonable to suggest that we are dealing with some sort of delusion, projection or hypnotic suggestion? And if so, is it too much of a stretch to add that these anomalous perceptions might not just be the product of random chance, or eating too much cheese before going to bed, but something somehow deliberately intended to deceive and disorient us, an exercise in mind control and psychic manipulation?

And who, I wonder, would want to do that?

The reason I find these questions interesting is not because I ‘believe in UFOs’ or even have a particular interest in whether or not aliens exist. I am completely agnostic when it comes to such matters. The much more interesting question, to my mind, is why do we tell ourselves these stories in the first place? What purpose do they serve? How might we best understand the reality lying behind them, whatever that may be?

The fact that people with no symptoms or history of mental illness have experiences they cannot explain and can only describe in terms of aliens is not in question. They clearly do. We have a great deal of testimony from people who sincerely believe they have seen and in some cases had contact with what they suppose to be aliens. Of course, many of these people may be deluded or just simply mistaken. And yes, it is possible to provide alternative and sometimes more plausible explanations for many of these experiences. But whatever the reality behind the phenomenon of UFO sightings and alien encounters, unless we accept the most literal explanation – namely that we are talking about flesh and blood creatures from outer space visiting earth in nuts-and-bolts spaceships – then these experiences are not what they purport to be. If we think we’re seeing a UFO but in fact we’re not, then whatever else may account for that experience, whether the explanation is mundane or supernatural, we are being deceived. For that reason alone we would be best advised to treat UFO/alien phenomena with suspicion and assume that we are dealing with something that could have a potentially malign influence, whether they are ‘real’ or not. If these entities are not what they appear to be, then we should question everything else about them too, starting with the reasons behind their manifestation.