Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday removed Monsignor Stephen Rossetti from his role as an exorcist of the archdiocese after Rossetti publicly suggested that UFO sightings were the work of demons.
McElroy also said the archdiocese was severing ties with the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, a Washington-based nonprofit that Rossetti leads. The center’s mission includes deliverance ministry and exorcism training.
In a statement, McElroy said Rossetti’s comments “linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center’s recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism.”
The controversy stems from a May 29 video Rossetti posted on his Facebook page. In the video, he addressed UFO sightings and the existence of extraterrestrial life.
“There’s a danger here,” Rossetti said. “As an exorcist I wanted to raise that danger. And that is that demons like to hide. … They don’t want us to know what they’re doing because they’re more effective when we don’t realize it.”
Rossetti, a well-known priest and author on spiritual warfare and exorcism, has served as an exorcist for the archdiocese for several years. The St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal describes itself as a “Catholic apostolate dedicated to spiritual renewal” and offers resources on deliverance and exorcism.
McElroy’s decision to remove Rossetti and cut ties with the center signals that church leaders are unwilling to tolerate public claims that stray from official doctrine, even on speculative subjects such as UFOs. The Vatican’s 2019 document on exorcism and prayer for liberation, updated by the Congregation for Divine Worship, emphasized that exorcism must be conducted within strict theological guidelines and warned against “a tendency to treat demons as the cause of every evil.”
The incident comes amid broader public interest in UFOs, fueled in part by recent Pentagon declassification efforts. In April, former President Donald Trump ordered the release of UFO-related files from multiple agencies, reigniting debate over unexplained aerial phenomena. Rossetti’s comments tapped into that cultural moment, but church officials moved quickly to separate the archdiocese’s official practice from any link between extraterrestrial topics and the church’s teaching on demonic activity.