Does the existence of alien life threaten religion — or strengthen it? The question is newly urgent after the Pentagon this week released a third batch of declassified UFO files — and the debate has reached the highest levels of government and the Catholic Church.

Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, has a clear take. “I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons,” Mr. Vance said in a recent podcast interview.

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a former exorcist with the Archdiocese of Washington, agreed — and paid a price. He was removed last week by the archbishop, who said his statements “gravely undermine” Catholic teaching on demons and the devil. “It’s my personal belief that probably many, if not most, of these UFO sightings are in fact demons,” Mr. Rossetti said in a May 29 Facebook video.

Not all Catholic thinkers agree. Christopher Baglow, who leads a science and religion initiative at the University of Notre Dame, says the church has never taken an official position on extraterrestrial life. “Theologians have been speculating about this for centuries and the church has never ever taught one way or the other,” Mr. Baglow said.

Pope Leo XIV, while meeting with astronomy students at the Vatican last year, spoke of the “ancient light of distant galaxies” — remarks some interpreted as tacit openness to life elsewhere in the universe.

Religion scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka at the University of North Carolina Wilmington sees the broader UAP craze as a net positive for faith.

“Belief in UFOs is really one of the best things that’s happened to religion in a long time,” Ms. Walsh Pasulka said. “It’s a blow to the secular, materialist worldview.”

Read more:

• Pentagon releases third batch of formerly classified UFO documents

• As UFOs go mainstream, the jury is out on what the existence of alien life might mean for religion