Main Article / Jul 09, 2026

An exorcist's UAP theory cost him his archdiocese role

By Jan for UAP Logbook / Published

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Monsignor Stephen Rossetti was removed as Washington's Chief Exorcist after linking UAPs to demons, exposing the boundaries between private ministry and public UAP theories.

Editorial illustration showing a gothic church window next to a modern sky telescope, with a faint light in the dark sky.
Editorial illustration by UAP Logbook. It represents the intersection of theological tradition and astronomical inquiry, not a physical event.

Monsignor Stephen J. Rossetti spent nearly 19 years as the Archdiocese of Washington's chief exorcist. In early June 2026, Cardinal Robert McElroy ended that role — and cut the archdiocese's ties to Rossetti's own ministry — after Rossetti told a wide online audience that most UFO sightings are probably demons.

The trigger was a video Rossetti recorded for a program called Faith, Hope and Love Ministry, which he also promoted through his St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal channels. In it, he argued that demons use the mystery of UFOs as a kind of disguise, a way to manipulate human perception without revealing what they actually are. The clip spread fast. Within days, McElroy had removed him from the exorcist post and severed the archdiocese's institutional relationship with the St. Michael Center entirely.

McElroy's statement didn't mince words: Rossetti's comments "gravely undermine the Church's very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism". He was careful to frame this as a correction of conduct, not a Vatican ruling on whether aliens exist. Exorcism, in his telling, is supposed to be quiet, pastoral, almost invisible work — not a platform for public theorizing about aerospace anomalies.

A claim that spread faster than the correction

Rossetti's own response was contrite. He said he was saddened by the decision and asked forgiveness for any way he'd strayed from the Magisterium's teaching. What's less visible in the official statements is that the original video itself was pulled from public view shortly after the story broke — a detail that matters, since it means most people now encounter Rossetti's claim only secondhand, through news coverage rather than his own words.

Not everyone accepted McElroy's framing as a simple conduct issue. Some Catholic commentators pushed back hard, arguing Rossetti had violated no actual dogma — the Church has taught the existence of demons for centuries, and the rite of exorcism has been formally codified since 1999 — and that removing a 19-year veteran exorcist over a theological opinion looked disproportionate. A few pointed out, not without irony, that McElroy himself has faced criticism from some bishops over his own doctrinal statements on the Eucharist, which made his invocation of "precise teaching" land awkwardly for critics. That criticism hasn't come from Rome or from Church authorities with jurisdiction over McElroy, but it's part of how the story has actually played out online, and leaving it out would flatten a genuinely two-sided dispute into a one-sided institutional press release.

Where the Vatican already stands on aliens

None of this happened in a vacuum. The Vatican Observatory has spent decades treating extraterrestrial life as a legitimate scientific question rather than a spiritual threat. Father José Gabriel Funes, who directed the observatory until 2011, wrote in L'Osservatore Romano back in 2008 that believing other intelligent beings might exist doesn't conflict with Catholic faith — "just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God."

Brother Guy Consolmagno, who runs the observatory now, has gone further, joking that he'd baptize an alien if one asked. It's a scientist's framing: curious, open, unthreatened. Rossetti's demons framing sits almost at the opposite end of that spectrum, treating the same phenomenon as something to fear and expel rather than study.

Two departments, two very different jobs

What the Rossetti case actually shows isn't that the Church has a firm position on UFOs — it doesn't. It's that the Church runs two very different operations that happen to both touch the same topic, and it doesn't want them talking to each other in public. The observatory can speculate about alien life as science. The exorcism ministry is supposed to stay quiet, private, and pastoral, dealing with individual cases rather than broadcasting theories to a general audience.

Rossetti crossed that line not by having an opinion, but by turning a private ministry into a public theory with a large online following. Whether that alone justified ending a 19-year assignment is exactly the part still being argued over — inside Catholic media, and outside it.

Related UAP Logbook notes

Sources

  • Archdiocese of Washington official statement, June 2026.
  • "Catholic exorcist removed after linking UFOs to demonic activity," The Guardian, June 2026.
  • "Why Cardinal McElroy removed Washington's chief exorcist," America Magazine, June 2026.
  • "Faith, Hope and Love Ministry" video broadcast, late May 2026 (pulled from public circulation).
  • José Gabriel Funes: "L'extraterrestre è mio fratello" (The Extraterrestrial is My Brother), L'Osservatore Romano, May 14, 2008.
  • St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal public statements.

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