On June 3, 2026, Robert Cardinal McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, removed Monsignor Stephen Rossetti as an exorcist of the Archdiocese of Washington and ended the archdiocese’s affiliation with Rossetti’s Saint Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal. In a statement posted to the archdiocesan website, the cardinal said that Rossetti’s public remarks linking UFOs to demonic presence, together with the center’s recent use of social media, “gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism.”
The trigger was a video Rossetti posted to YouTube on May 29. In it he affirmed that one could believe in extraterrestrial life and “be a good Catholic,” but cautioned, as an exorcist, that demons like to hide and deceive. He then stated that in his personal opinion — and “not de fide” — “many, if not most” UFO sightings are demons. The video was marked private soon afterward, although copies have since been reposted elsewhere on YouTube (for example, Rossetti’s video appears at this link, from the 2:57 mark to 8:47).
Rossetti is a priest of the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, but he has ministered in the Archdiocese of Washington since 1993, when he joined the staff of the St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, MD. St. Luke’s treated clergy with psychological and behavioral problems, including priests accused of sexual abuse. Rossetti served as president of St. Luke’s from 1996 until 2009, when he resigned and joined the faculty of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. In the same year, he also became the chaplain to the Washington Nationals baseball team. He returned to his role as president of St. Luke’s from 2013 to 2014 following a scandal involving his successor at the institute. Before this week, Rossetti had served as an archdiocesan exorcist in Washington for nearly two decades, and also established the Saint Michael Center in the archdiocese.
In a statement on the center’s website, Rossetti said he was saddened by the archdiocese’s decision and asked forgiveness for any way he had not been faithful to the teaching of the Church’s magisterium, “particularly in the cited video on ‘aliens and the demonic.’” He pledged continued obedience to the Church and said the Saint Michael Center plans to continue its ministry elsewhere.
Rossetti, 74, is a licensed psychologist as well as a priest. One of the best-known celebrity exorcists in the United States, he is the author of Diary of an American Exorcist. He has built a large social media following.
The removal of Rossetti is the most significant institutional response so far to an increasingly common assertion made in some Catholic circles — that UFOs are not extraterrestrial craft but demons in disguise.
The most prominent Catholic promoter of the idea is Fr. Chad Ripperger, the traditionalist priest and self-described exorcist whose views we have examined at length. Ripperger has told enormous podcast audiences — on the Shawn Ryan Show and elsewhere — that alien-abduction accounts are indistinguishable from demonic activity. Ripperger’s views are not rooted in Catholic teaching, but instead are based upon the work of evangelical creationist author Gary Bates and his book Alien Intrusion.
This idea has also reached the highest levels of American politics. In an interview published March 28 on the Benny Johnson Show, Vice President JD Vance said of UFOs, “I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons anyway,” tying the view to his Christian conviction that one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he does not exist. Paul Chu and V. J. Tarantino wrote a philosophical and theological response to that claim for us, “JD Vance versus the Little Gray Men”.
The roots of this theory lie in the ufology subculture that began in the late 1940s and are tied to Protestant fundamentalist eschatology. The theory was also promoted by a prominent Eastern Orthodox priest in 1970s California, Fr. Seraphim Rose. The view was introduced by Catholics through condemned or unapproved private revelations such as Veronica Lueken’s Bayside messages, which described flying saucers as vehicles ferrying demons. Secular culture also plays with versions of this idea, including my personal favorite (whatever “favorite” means), a claimed link between fallen angels and Bigfoot. This and other fringe theories notwithstanding, the Catholic Church acknowledgesthe possibility of extraterrestrial life, and has largely delegated the question to scientists and popular culture.
Cardinal McElroy’s action is significant because Rossetti is only one of a growing number of priests and Catholic influencers to promote this view publicly. This appears to be the first response from the institutional Church regarding the promotion of this conspiracy theory as Catholic truth.
Nathan Turowsky—a native New Englander, an alumnus of Boston University School of Theology, and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution—works in the nonprofit sector and writes at Silicate Siesta.
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