What has the Vatican said about aliens? From Pope Francis to Pope Leo XIV

No official Church document says that life exists beyond Earth, or that it doesn't. The Vatican Observatory's director, Father Richard D'Souza, put it plainly in an August 2025 interview with Radio Veritas Asia: "The Church does not have any opinions for or against the possibility of life on other planets." Such a discovery, he added, "could spur a lot of new theological discussion."

What does exist is a series of remarks by Vatican astronomers, churchmen and one pope, all pointing the same way: if life is found, it will be part of creation, not a threat to faith. None of them is about UFOs, and none claims that aliens have visited Earth.

The Vatican Observatory (Specola Vaticana) is one of the oldest astronomical research institutes in the world. Pope Leo XIII refounded it in 1891; today it is based at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome, with a research group in Tucson, Arizona. Its staff are priests and brothers who are working scientists, most of them Jesuits, and they publish in the ordinary scientific journals.

Its recent directors were Father José Gabriel Funes (2006–2015), Brother Guy Consolmagno (2015 to September 2025) and, since then, Father Richard D'Souza, a Jesuit galaxy researcher from Goa, India, appointed by Pope Leo XIV.

In May 2008 Funes gave an interview to the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that ran under the headline "L'extraterrestre è mio fratello" ("The extraterrestrial is my brother"). "In my opinion this possibility exists," he said. "So far we have no proof." He asked: "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" and "why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation." In his view, "we cannot place limits on the creative freedom of God."

He added a piece of theology that made headlines: it is "not a given that they need redemption," because they "might have remained in full friendship with their creator." It was an astronomer's interview, not a Church pronouncement, but it set the tone for the years that followed.

In November 2009, during the International Year of Astronomy, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences brought about 30 scientists to the Vatican for a study week on the origins of life and life beyond Earth. Participants included NASA researchers, leading university astronomers and SETI pioneer Jill Tarter.

Funes, who organized it, said the questions were "very suitable and deserve serious consideration" and carried "many philosophical and theological implications," while stressing that the week was mainly about science.

On May 12, 2014, preaching at his early-morning Mass in the Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis asked: "If, for example, an expedition of Martians arrived tomorrow," and one of them said he wanted to be baptized, "What would happen?" He pictured them as "green, with long noses and big ears, like in children's drawings."

The homily was not about space. It was about Peter, criticized in the Acts of the Apostles for baptizing gentiles, and Francis's point was that the Church should not close its doors to anyone who asks to come in. Headlines still read "Pope would baptize Martians."

The most-quoted answer came from Consolmagno in 2010, at a Birmingham Science Festival event, when a journalist asked whether he would baptize an extraterrestrial. His reply: "Only if she asks!" It was a joke, and he later noted that it was reported as if it were an official Vatican pronouncement about aliens.

In 2014 it became the title of his book with Father Paul Mueller, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?, which answers questions sent to the Observatory, from the Big Bang to the Star of Bethlehem.

Leo XIV, the first American pope, was elected in May 2025. We found no statement by him about aliens or UFOs. The closest is a June 16, 2025 address to the Vatican Observatory's summer school, devoted to the James Webb Space Telescope: thanks to it, he said, "for the first time we are able to peer deeply into the atmosphere of exoplanets where life may be developing."

That is all. Headlines about a "dramatic papal statement on aliens" or a "secret Vatican UFO archive" rest on no document or speech. And in May 2026, asked by NewsNation about the UFO files being released in the US, D'Souza reportedly said "we should never abandon the course of reason" and "we shouldn't sensationalise something that has not been fully proved."

If a signal from another intelligence were confirmed, or the US government confirmed something, expect the Vatican's first response to come from its Observatory: a careful look at the evidence and the familiar message that creation is bigger than we thought. D'Souza has already said such a discovery would spark new theological discussion, and that "the Church is not opposed to true and good science."

Believers would probably cope too. In theologian Ted Peters' survey, most believers, Catholics among them, said discovering extraterrestrial intelligence would not shake their faith. For the Jewish view see aliens in Judaism, and for everything else that would change, our day-after guide.