Monsignor Stephen Rossetti had spent years as one of the Catholic Church's most prominent exorcists in the United States, a Washington priest with a public profile built on lectures, writing, and ministry. Then he started posting about UFOs.
On June 4, 2026, multiple outlets — AP News, OSV News, and The Catholic Weekly among them — reported that Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, had removed Rossetti from the Archdiocese's exorcism ministry. The stated reason, as reported by OSV News: comments Rossetti had made about UFOs and demonic activity on social media.
The core of what Rossetti apparently argued, according to Newsweek's profile of him published the same day, was that many — possibly most — UFO sightings could be explained as demonic in origin. That is not, on its face, a fringe position within certain strands of Catholic theological tradition. But it appears to have crossed a line for McElroy, though the specific posts and the precise reasoning behind the removal have not been officially disclosed. The Archdiocese of Washington had not issued a formal public statement explaining the decision as of the time of reporting, which means the full rationale remains secondhand.
That gap matters. There is no primary source document — no letter from McElroy, no official press release, no published canonical proceeding — available in the public record. What exists are several credible news accounts, all pointing in the same direction but varying in their specific characterizations. AP News described the removal as being tied to comments about UFOs and demons broadly. OSV News specified social media as the venue. AOL.com ran two separate items: one headlined around UFO comments generically, another that simply called him a DC priest without naming him. Newsweek named Rossetti and quoted his position on UFOs as demonic phenomena. These accounts are consistent enough to treat the removal as reported fact — but the details of what specifically triggered McElroy's decision remain unconfirmed.
The theology underneath the headline
To understand why this matters beyond the spectacle of a fired exorcist, it helps to know where the broader Catholic conversation on UFOs currently stands — and where it is conspicuously absent.
The Vatican Observatory, one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world, has historically been willing to entertain the possibility of extraterrestrial life without treating it as theologically catastrophic. That is a long way from Rossetti's apparent position. Claiming that UFO phenomena are primarily demonic — that they represent spiritual deception rather than, say, natural phenomena or genuinely unknown aerospace objects — is a specific theological claim with real pastoral consequences. It tells Catholics who report sightings, or who are curious about UAP disclosure, that their curiosity may itself be spiritually dangerous.
NewsNation's Susie Pinto reported in May 2026 on Father Carlos Martins, another Catholic priest who had made similar arguments. Pinto's piece quoted Martins directly: "If the devil brings it about, he can put it into the human imagination that there is extraterrestrial life, that there are civilizations out there, then he can cause doubt in the Scriptures." Martins was not, as far as the reporting indicates, removed from any ministry. Rossetti was. The distinction between those two cases — why one priest's public UFO-as-demonic-deception argument apparently crossed a threshold that another's did not — is one of the most important unanswered questions in this story.
"If the devil brings it about, he can put it into the human imagination that there is extraterrestrial life, that there are civilizations out there, then he can cause doubt in the Scriptures."
One possible reading: Rossetti's statements were made on social media, in a format that amplified them beyond a controlled theological context, and McElroy — a cardinal navigating the politics of a Church already under intense public scrutiny — decided the optics were untenable. Another reading: the content itself went further than Martins's comments, or was framed in ways that implicated the Archdiocese more directly. Without the actual posts, it is impossible to say.
A third reading, which should be raised even if it cannot yet be confirmed: McElroy's decision may reflect something about the institutional Church's desire to avoid being drawn into the UFO disclosure debate at all. That debate is accelerating in Washington — politically, not just theologically — and a prominent exorcist publicly declaring that UFOs are devils is exactly the kind of story that writes its own punchline in a congressional hearing room.
A broader orbit
The Rossetti story does not exist in isolation. The same week his removal was reported, a YouTube channel called UFOs-Disclosure — a tier-four source, meaning one without the editorial standards of a news organization, whose claims should be treated with corresponding caution — published a post featuring self-described insider Emery Smith claiming that a tetrahedron UFO recovered in New Mexico had been cataloged inside secret Vatican archives. Smith's account, offered on a program called Cosmic Disclosure alongside David Wilcock, described Vatican underground vaults containing alien artifacts and interagency teams studying material that allegedly behaved like living organisms. None of this is independently verified. The Vatican has made no such acknowledgment. It is the kind of claim that circulates in the UAP research community in a closed loop, citing no documents and naming no officials who can be contacted.
Also that week, a YouTube review by commentator Cristina Gomez touched on Representative Tim Burchett's latest statements on UFO disclosure and reported rumors — unconfirmed, with no named sourcing — that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had discussed UFOs with the Pope during a meeting. Rubio has been a consistent presence in UAP-related congressional activity. Whether he raised the subject with the Pope is, at this point, a rumor without a named source, a document, or an official denial.
Taken together, what you have is this: in the same news cycle in which a Washington cardinal is disciplining a priest for saying UFOs are demonic, unverified claims are circulating that the Vatican's archives contain recovered alien craft and that America's top diplomat raised the UFO question in Rome. The institutional Church is simultaneously being pulled into the UAP debate from below — through priests like Rossetti and Martins making public theological claims — and, if the rumors are to be believed at all, potentially from above, through diplomatic channels that have not been confirmed by any named official.
None of this proves coordination, or even awareness of the other threads. But it does describe a moment in which the Catholic Church, one of the world's largest institutions, is being asked — from multiple directions at once — to take a position on what is in the sky.
McElroy's answer, at least on one front, appears to be: not like this.
What would sharpen the picture considerably is the release of the actual social media posts that triggered Rossetti's removal, or an official statement from the Archdiocese explaining the canonical reasoning. The specific distinction between what Rossetti said and what Martins said — and why one cost a man his ministry — is the thread that, once pulled, would tell us whether this is a story about one priest's overreach or something more deliberate about how the institutional Church intends to manage its posture on UAP in a period of accelerating public disclosure.