In February, President Donald Trump announced that he would declassify the government’s confidential files on UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena — and have the Pentagon post them online on a rolling basis. Excitement over disclosure was already very high among enthusiasts, but the next month it took an unexpected spiritual turn. On the March 28 Benny Johnson podcast, Vice President JD Vance said he had been “obsessed” with the files, then gave his own opinion on extraterrestrials: “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway.” Channeling Keyser Söze, he added that “one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed.”

Vance was not the only Catholic promoting this theory. On May 29, in a viral video since removed, the priest-psychologist Monsignor Stephen Rossetti — who has gained a sizable online following for his books and videos about his role as an exorcist — shared his “personal belief” that “many, if not most” UFO sightings “are in fact demons.” And days later Church leadership responded. On June 3 the Archdiocese of Washington announced that Cardinal Robert McElroy had removed Rossetti as an archdiocesan exorcist and cut ties with his Saint Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, saying his statements “linking UFOs to demonic presence” — along with the center’s use of social media — “gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism.” Rossetti, who remains a priest in good standing in the Diocese of Syracuse, accepted the decision, calling it “of the utmost importance to be obedient to the Church.”

In some sectors of Catholic online discourse, the subject of UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial life has suddenly become difficult to avoid. Nine days after Rossetti was removed, legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg released Disclosure Day, a film based on the premise that the US government has been hiding proof of visitors from other worlds since the Roswell incident. In an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, Spielberg opined that knowledge about intelligent life on other planets might challenge people’s religious beliefs and lead them to ask questions like, “Is God our God only on this planet, or is God a God for every system where there’s civilization?”

Spielberg added, “If the government announced, ‘Yes we have been keeping this from you since 1947,’ that would mess up a lot of people.”

Whether or not the film shakes anyone’s faith, most filmgoers are treating it as precisely what it appears to be — a new Steven Spielberg blockbuster. Reviewers have largely debated the familiar questions — whether Disclosure Day recaptures the magic of his earlier films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., and whether the 79-year-old Spielberg still has what it takes to deliver another massive summer hit. A small but vocal group of Catholic commentators, however, does not see the movie as harmless summer entertainment. To them it is something far more serious — and they have set out to warn the faithful away from it.

The ‘aliens are demons’ hypothesis

Rossetti’s removal as an exorcist is significant because it is perhaps the first public response from Church leadership to an increasingly popular belief among a sector of US Catholics. Vatican astronomers and theologians have discussed the possibility of extraterrestrial life for decades, but place it in the context of modern science and theological speculation. In a 2014 homily, Pope Francis even suggested that a Martian who requested baptism would be welcomed into the Church.

But at the Church’s highest levels, such topics are typically approached with skepticism and scientific rigor. Discussion about UFOs and space aliens is relegated to the hypothetical realm. In response to the titular question of Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno answers in line with the pope, “Only if she asks!” But the former director of the Vatican Observatory also states clearly in the book, “I do not know of any credible evidence at all that there has ever been contact of any form between extraterrestrial aliens and Earth. Period.”

In a 1917 lecture, the German sociologist Max Weber described the “disenchantment of the world.” He did not necessarily mean that people had stopped believing in God, but that the world had been drained of mystery — spirits, omens, and magic had been replaced with the assumption that everything can, in principle, be explained by science. Generations of studies and surveys have shown an ongoing decline in church attendance and religious belief in the West. Those at the highest levels of Church leadership and in academic circles have spent decades working out how science and faith can coexist side by side, embracing historical criticism and the natural sciences, even as the number of adherents goes down.

The Church can hold the question of extraterrestrial life open without granting that any particular light in the sky is a visitor — let alone a demon. But a visible and growing online subset of Catholics has gone further, embracing the claims of the contemporary UFO subculture and adapting them into the language of spiritual warfare. Although they reject the conclusions of ufologists that sightings and encounters are extraterrestrial or interdimensional visitors, they agree that these events are extraordinary phenomena — but demonic in nature. The voices promoting the belief are driving a kind of fear-driven, bottom-up re-enchantment of popular Catholic culture through podcasts, internet videos, and suspicion about whatever is unknown. It is embraced by erudite traditionalists and passionate charismatics alike. Perhaps this re-enchantment has such reach because it pushes back against a secularized culture that rejects the notions of spirits, demons, miracles, and divine intervention.

For a subset of American Catholics, “aliens are demons” answers a whole cluster of anxieties — technological upheaval, cultural degradation, and disillusionment with the leadership of both church and state. It provides clarity on unexplained phenomena and the mysteries of the universe. This worldview gives meaning to every strange light in the sky and turns the unknown into a story of spiritual warfare. In a disenchanted era, it offers both an explanation for evil in the world and certainty about the future. Many of those who accept this story see a “first contact” event on the horizon, but are certain that it will really be a Great Deception. This knowledge gives them a sense of chosenness. While the rest of humanity falls for the demonic lies of the alien imposters, they will be ready for the end times.

The “aliens are demons” hypothesis, despite its adoption by many Christians, does not derive straightforwardly from Christian tradition. Its modern roots lie in mid-20th-century UFO culture, especially in the work of the French astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallée, who destabilized the extraterrestrial hypothesis by arguing that the number and variety of UFO and alien encounters could not be explained simply as visitors from another planet. Instead, he suggested that such sightings might be manifestations of a reality that transcends our current understanding of physics — perhaps parallel universes, visitors from other dimensions, or some other phenomenon we do not yet have the language to explain.

Vallée rejected religious and supernatural explanations. But he did believe that these phenomena might explain many mysteries that have been passed down through the centuries as myths, folk tales, and fairy stories. In other words, these visitors from above might have always been appearing among us, with every culture offering its own popular explanation for what, or who, they are.

Despite Vallée’s skepticism, many Christians in the 1970s nevertheless began giving these encounters religious significance. Some were open to the possibility that the visitors were benign — even angelic. In his 1975 bestseller Angels: God’s Secret Agents, Billy Graham noted that “some Christian writers have speculated that UFOs could very well be a part of God’s angelic host who preside over the physical affairs of universal creation,” while cautioning against asserting that with certainty. Others took a far darker view. Among them were Eastern Orthodox priest Seraphim Rose and Long Island Catholic visionary Veronica Lueken — the famed seer associated with the condemned Bayside apparitions — who were convinced they were signs of the demonic.

From creationist apologetics to Catholic celebrity exorcists

Veronica Lueken’s locutions aside, the idea that space aliens are demons in disguise was not primarily developed by Catholics. The most elaborate versions of the theory came from Protestant young-earth creationists who saw UFO belief as another front in the war against literal interpretations of Genesis. Perhaps the most influential voice in this group was Australian creationist Gary Bates, whose 2004 book Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection argued that alien encounters are not visits from another planet but a diabolical deception warned against repeatedly in the Bible. But Bates introduced ideas that have since been borrowed by popular Catholic exorcists — such as the notion that demons posing as aliens “can influence the way some people think and act. They can even possess (indwell) humans.”

Bates believes these entities often act as if they want to help humanity, but we should not be fooled. He writes, “These beings do act deceptively. They also act dishonestly. One would have good reason to be suspicious of their motives, despite their yarns about being here to help us. These beings say one thing and do another.”

Vance and Rossetti are only two of many Catholic public figures advancing the hypothesis these days. It is promoted by an online subculture surrounding Catholic “celebrity exorcist” influencers, which has garnered countless video clicks and brisk book sales. Perhaps the most famous of these, Colorado priest Father Chad Ripperger, espoused the view in an interview on the March 28 episode of the Shawn Ryan Show. To date, it has more than 4.4 million views on YouTube.

During the interview, Ripperger opined on reported alien abductions, saying, “If you strip the veneer of the alien aspect of it off, in fact what you’re dealing with is just — they’re just demons.” On UFO sightings, he added, “There’s some that speculate too that some of the craft that we see moving in ways that are contrary to physical laws is also just a diabolic mirage, which they can cause.”

Ripperger has espoused this view on multiple occasions, including at a $95 per attendee event in Wisconsin last year called “Restore Truth Conference 2025: The Storm is Here — From Diabolical Deception to Restoration of Truth.” The event was sponsored by the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, an organization that promotes the idea that “Catholics are obliged to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles.” In other words, they claim that young-earth creationism is divinely revealed dogma and that all orthodox Catholics must believe it. During his talk, Ripperger rejected evolution outright and spoke approvingly of geocentrism — the belief that the Earth sits fixed at the center of the universe and the sun and planets orbit around it.

Science fiction and the ‘Great Deception’

Ripperger is neither the newest nor the most passionate Catholic figure promoting the “aliens are demons” hypothesis. When Disclosure Day opened, Catholic author and end-times enthusiast Daniel O’Connor took to YouTube — in a video viewed more than 100,000 times — to warn that the film was “the ultimate push for the ET deception” and that “Steven Spielberg has been the Groomer-In-Chief of society, for decades, as far as the Great Deception is concerned. But ‘Disclosure Day’ is his biggest assault yet and his clearest preparation for the Antichrist.”

For several years, O’Connor has argued that the Great Deception mentioned in Scripture will take the form of society making “first contact” with creatures claiming to be aliens from other planets who will bring us new technologies and new ways of thinking that will draw people away from Christianity because (as you have already guessed) they aren’t aliens at all, but demons.

O’Connor says in the video, “You really cannot overestimate the significance of science fiction in providing the context for the great deception itself.” In his 558-page (Kindle Edition) book The First and Last Deception: Aliens, UFOs, AI, and the Return of Eden’s Demise, he elaborates, saying, “the men and women of the present age—groomed by decades of delusions from a culture long held in the grip of Satan—have been primed to anticipate the promise of ‘new knowledge’ from ‘first contact’ with extraterrestrials upon the ‘day of disclosure’” (p. 180).

Spielberg is clearly a villain in O’Connor’s eyes, and according to O’Connor in the video, “Spielberg’s goal is to portray aliens as godlike and to seduce us into opening ourselves up into friendship with them. He is obsessed with the need for us to give our fiat — the anti-fiat — to the extraterrestrials.” He holds Spielberg’s films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in particular contempt. He claims that Close Encounters opposes religious faith and serves to “summarize a movement and inspire its continued pursuit to elicit a pseudo-religious faith and hope whose object is not God but benevolent extraterrestrials.” Of E.T., O’Connor says, “This ‘children’s movie’ tugs on every heartstring imaginable in order to ensure that no child or adult who watches it leaves the experience without intimately identifying with the protagonist’s fanatical love and longing for E.T.” Later, he adds, “Elliot’s connection to the alien most closely resembles voodoo.”

There is no film, apparently, that can fail O’Connor’s test. Friendly aliens, like those in E.T. or The Day the Earth Stood Still, are grooming us to welcome the deception. But when the aliens are hostile, as in Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds, he condemns that too, because the film still “promotes the fundamental lie that aliens exist.” By that measure, presumably, Mork & Mindy and ALF were softening up a generation as well.

It’s unclear whether O’Connor recognizes that his Great Deception narrative closely resembles many science fiction tales itself. Plenty of stories follow the premise of aliens coming to earth under the guise of peaceful, kind, and generous visitors who want to share their knowledge with humanity — but turn out to be evil monsters here to kill or enslave us. The first time I heard O’Connor’s theory, the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” immediately came to mind. So did the miniseries V (both the 1980s original and the 2000s remake). Even the weird looking invaders from Mars Attacks! kept announcing “We come in peace” as they torched suburban America with their laser guns. Maybe the aliens in these stories were really demons. At the very least, they weren’t very nice. But I suspect they do not count in O’Connor’s book either, for one reason or another.

O’Connor’s commentary on Disclosure Day also took a darker turn. Spielberg’s “life mission is to be the prophet of the extraterrestrials,” he said, and then: “of course, it’s really something we should also acknowledge. He is Jewish, which means he’s been waiting for 2,000 years too long for the Messiah as a people.” It is “in his blood,” O’Connor continued, “in his very bones, you could say, to be awaiting the Messiah,” and so he is “ready to welcome a savior” from the stars. O’Connor extended the charge to the Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb — “also a Jew” — and then to the Jewish people as a whole, warning of “a large contingent of Jews especially who seem primed to welcome a supposed messiah under the banner of the extraterrestrial UFO deception.” Sadly and predictably, this kind of antisemitism recurs throughout traditionalist, reactionary, and apocalyptic Catholic circles.

O’Connor came out hot in a video responding to Rossetti’s removal, arguing that Cardinal McElroy removed Monsignor Rossetti because his position as an exorcist in Washington, DC — the “epicenter of UFO disclosure” — posed a direct threat to the planned alien deception. O’Connor apparently believes that the archbishop of Washington is directly involved in the demonic plot, stating: “Imagine how damaging it would be to those plans if the very place where they were planned to be unleashed had, as its assigned Catholic exorcist, a priest who denounced that very thing as diabolical. That would devastate the enemy’s plans.”

Also suggesting a satanic plot behind Disclosure Day was Father Dan Reehil, yet another celebrity exorcist, based in the Diocese of Nashville. Reehil, like Ripperger, has a wide audience. He has also appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show, and he directs a national Catholic radio network. Last week on his radio program Battle Ready, he speculated, “I’m not saying this is what was done, but this could be done. The movie could be consecrated to Satan and demons can be attached to the movie.” Recalling what he was told by John Corapi — a popular priest and EWTN personality before his double life was exposed in 2011 — about heavy metal bands that were said to dedicate their albums to Satan, Reehil warned that “they could put a curse over the film that all who watch it would have demons provoke them. It could happen. We don’t know if it did, but it could.” He also questioned Cardinal McElroy’s judgment, calling Rossetti’s removal “an odd reason to can somebody.”

Popular Catholicism vs. the institutional Church

What does the popularity of exorcists like Rossetti and Ripperger say about the beliefs of ordinary Catholics? What does the confidence with which Vance expressed his opinion say about the scope of acceptable public discourse? Are they harbingers of a re-enchantment of American society, or signs that a portion of the faithful is drifting into a parallel religious universe that the institutional Church no longer quite recognizes?

Rossetti’s removal was a rare collision between two Catholic worlds that hardly ever meet. Cardinal McElroy is part of the Church’s establishment — grounded, cautious, and determined to avoid having diocesan officials share sensational theories about demons and UFOs on the internet and watch them go viral. Vance, Rossetti, and Ripperger represent a stranger, less “respectable” version of religiosity that sees miracles, prophecies, spirits, and demons as constant realities impacting the physical world. For such Catholics UFOs and other unexplained phenomena are fresh evidence that the cosmos is alive with hidden forces.

That a cardinal took action against an exorcist over UFO comments appears to be unprecedented. Rossetti’s supporters are stressing one point: the idea that aliens are really demons isn’t contrary to Church doctrine. McElroy’s statement, however, did not say Rossetti contradicted Catholic doctrine. It said his talk about UFOs and demons undermines Catholic doctrine and theology. Belief in unicorns, mermaids, and the Loch Ness monster isn’t ruled out by Catholic doctrine either, but that doesn’t mean they have a place in catechetical videos discussing spiritual health. If a prominent Catholic priest-psychologist were to upload a video to the internet asserting in all seriousness that leprechauns are real, that would undermine the credibility and seriousness of the faith.

None of this means the Church is abandoning belief in the spiritual realm or is embarrassed by its tradition. Catholic teaching affirms the reality of Satan and the fallen angels, and the Church maintains a formal ministry of exorcism. But that ministry, historically, has been discreet and disciplined — for good reason. Exorcists serve under the authority of their bishops, and traditionally their identities have only been known by the bishop and a small circle of clergy and professionals directly involved in evaluating and handling cases of alleged demonic activity. They are expected to consult with medical and psychological professionals in order to rule out natural and psychological explanations before diagnosing a preternatural one, and the best exorcists avoid the sensationalism and superstition that the Church has long treated as spiritual dangers in their own right. A danger with the current trend of celebrity exorcists has been their alarming tendency to publicly espouse unfounded, bizarre, pseudoscientific, and conspiratorial beliefs on podcasts and YouTube for global audiences. The most sensational and shocking excerpts from these videos are clipped by fans, who then share them on social media.

Given the popularity of such views among influential priests — especially public exorcists — future tension concerning this phenomenon seems inevitable. In the internet age, a priest’s influence (and fanbase) can extend far beyond his diocese. But only his local bishop has the authority to rein him in. What is a bishop to do if he prefers that exorcists remain anonymous but is appointed to lead a diocese with an entrenched celebrity exorcist-slash-YouTube star? Things could get ugly.

If the re-enchantment continues to build momentum, we will certainly see more of these collisions. The Church can try to steer believers toward its own cautious, sacramental view of the demonic, but it may find that most Catholics interested in these ideas are more likely to listen to podcasts and viral videos rather than their bishops. What we don’t know is what the Church will look like afterwards. Perhaps it will succeed in integrating hunger for the supernatural into a more disciplined spirituality, but on its current course it seems more likely that the distance will continue to grow between an official Catholicism that fears superstition and magical thinking and a popular Catholicism that fears a world that doesn’t believe in devils.