Washington’s chief exorcist said UFOs were demons. He just got removed.
The trigger was a May 29 video in which Rossetti, who has 148,000 Instagram followers, told viewers that “many, if not most, UFO sightings are, in fact, demons.”
On Wednesday, June 3, 2026, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, removed Monsignor Stephen Rossetti as exorcist of the archdiocese. He also ended all affiliation between the archdiocese and Rossetti’s Saint Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal in Washington, D.C.
The reason: Rossetti’s recent public claim that UFOs are demons.
In a video posted to YouTube on May 29, 2026, Rossetti told his audience: “Many, if not most, [UFO] sightings are, in fact, demons.“ He said the entities reported in modern UFO encounters “can do things that we can’t do, such [as] the speed and all sorts of things that human beings can’t do.“ He framed the comments as a warning. “There’s a danger here. As an exorcist I wanted to raise that danger. And that is that demons like to hide.“
By the following Wednesday, Rossetti was out.
The Catholic Church has formally entered the modern UFO disclosure conversation. And it has decided that the official position is no.
What McElroy actually said
The Cardinal’s statement, released by the archdiocese on Wednesday afternoon, was direct.
“Statements made by Monsignor Rossetti 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,“ McElroy wrote.
The archbishop did not specify which other social media activity by the Saint Michael Center had drawn his concern. The official statement focused on the UFO comments as the central problem.
Removing a priest from an exorcist role is unusual. The Church takes exorcism seriously, and exorcists are typically appointed by their local bishop after extensive training, vetting, and prayer. Removing one publicly, in a press release issued under the archbishop’s name, is the kind of action the Catholic Church usually reserves for cases where it wants to send a clear message both internally and externally.
This statement was sending a message.
Who Rossetti is
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti is not an obscure figure. For the past 19 years, he has been one of the most publicly visible exorcists in American Catholicism.
He is a priest of the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, and has held his exorcist role in the Washington archdiocese throughout his Washington tenure. He is also a licensed psychologist and a longtime professor at The Catholic University of America. He founded the Saint Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal as a nonprofit organization providing spiritual education workshops, exorcist training for clergy, and resources on demonic possession.
He is one of the most-followed exorcists in the world. His Instagram account has over 148,000 followers. He gives regular interviews to mainstream press about modern exorcism. The New York Post profiled him in 2021 reporting that he and his team perform up to 20 exorcisms per week. The Associated Press quoted him in 2023 describing what he said was a growing public appetite for information about possession and exorcism.
He has been the public face of exorcism in the United States for over a decade. That is what makes the removal so loud.
Rossetti’s response
In a statement posted to the Saint Michael Center website after the news broke, Rossetti said he was “saddened“ by the archdiocese’s decision and accepted it.
“I ask forgiveness for any ways that I have not been faithful to the teachings of the Church’s Magisterium, particularly in the cited video on ‘aliens and the demonic,’“ he wrote. “I believe it is of the utmost importance to be obedient to the Church and I will continue to endeavor to subject all that I do and the Center to be thus obedient.“
He added that he would continue to encourage others to follow Church teaching.
Rossetti remains a priest of the Diocese of Syracuse. He was not laicized (removed from the priesthood entirely). The action specifically ended his role as exorcist of the Washington archdiocese and severed the archdiocese’s institutional relationship with his nonprofit center.
In Catholic terms, this is a real disciplinary action but not the most severe one. It is the kind of measure that says you have crossed a line that requires public correction, without saying you are no longer a priest.
Why the Church is drawing a line now
The Catholic Church has had a long, careful relationship with the question of extraterrestrial life.
The Vatican Observatory, the Church’s official astronomical research institution, has researched the possibility of life beyond Earth for decades. In 2008, Father José Gabriel Funes, then the Vatican Observatory’s director, told the official Vatican newspaper that the existence of alien life would not contradict Christian theology. In 2017, Vatican Observatory Director Brother Guy Consolmagno told NBC News that aliens “are not a problem” for Catholic doctrine.
The Church has been notably open-minded about the scientific possibility of extraterrestrial life. The position has been roughly that God created the entire universe and whatever else is out there is also part of that creation.
The position on demons and exorcism, however, is much more carefully defined. The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifies that demons exist, that they are fallen angels, that they can influence and in rare cases possess human beings, and that exorcism is a sacramental rite specifically structured to address that influence. The Church has been careful, especially in recent decades, to distinguish between cases of genuine demonic activity (which it considers rare) and psychological or medical conditions that should be treated by professionals.
When a prominent exorcist publicly suggests that demons are responsible for UFO sightings, the Church faces two simultaneous problems. First, it conflates the scientifically open question of extraterrestrial life with the theologically specific question of demonic activity. Second, it risks turning every reported UFO encounter into a potential exorcism candidate, which is the kind of expansion of the demonic category that the Catechism is explicitly designed to prevent.
McElroy’s framing of the action as protecting “the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism“ is the operative phrase. The Church wants its teaching on demons kept precisely where it is, and Rossetti’s UFO comments were pushing it somewhere else.
The bigger UAP disclosure context
The timing matters.
The Catholic Church is taking this action during the most active period of U.S. government UFO disclosure in modern history. David Grusch testified to Congress in 2023 that the U.S. government has secretly recovered crashed UAPs and the bodies of “non-human pilots.” The House Oversight Committee is currently investigating a cluster of deaths and disappearances of scientists connected to U.S. nuclear, aerospace, and UFO research programs, including the Melissa Casias case our previous coverage has tracked. Steven Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day opens in theaters in nine days with a plot that fans believe directly engages with the UFO disclosure question.
In the middle of all of that, the most-followed Catholic exorcist in the United States posted a video saying that UFOs are demons. The video drew significant attention from religious media, secular media, and the broader UAP disclosure community. Six days later, his archbishop removed him.
The action does not just discipline Rossetti. It signals to other Catholic clergy who may be drawn into the UFO disclosure conversation that the Church has a specific position on what UFOs are not. They are not demons, in the Church’s official teaching. They may be something else entirely. They may be nothing at all. They may be future humans, as Spielberg has suggested. They may be extraterrestrial life, as the Vatican Observatory has long left open. They may be the work of intelligence agencies, foreign militaries, or natural phenomena.
But they are not demons, according to Washington’s archbishop, and any exorcist who tells the public otherwise is going to lose their faculties.
What this means
For Rossetti personally, the removal is a significant public reprimand, but he remains a priest and a published author, and his Saint Michael Center can continue operating independently. He has already accepted the decision and apologized.
For the Catholic Church, the action is part of a broader effort under the new pontificate of Pope Leo XIV to tighten the consistency of public Catholic teaching, especially around topics that have generated significant online ambiguity.
For the broader UFO disclosure conversation, the action is a meaningful data point. One of the major religious frameworks for interpreting UAP activity, that UFOs are spiritual rather than physical, just lost its most visible Catholic proponent. The Church has not said what UFOs are. The Church has said what they are not.
The conversation continues. The exorcism rite remains as the Catechism describes it. The UAP investigations continue in Congress. The Spielberg movie opens June 12. And the most-followed exorcist in American Catholicism just got a very public reminder that the Catholic Church takes its precise teaching very seriously, especially in moments when the broader culture is asking questions the Church has not yet decided how to answer.
The truth, as Rossetti himself said in his apology, is the Church’s to define. He is going to be more careful about offering his own version of it from here on out.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Archdiocese of Washington (June 3, 2026), official statement from Cardinal Robert McElroy including the verified “gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching” framing
Associated Press and Daily Gazette (June 3, 2026), primary reporting on the Rossetti removal including the verified “There’s a danger here” quote from the May 29 video
National Catholic Register (June 3, 2026), Catholic press reporting including the verified “many, if not most, UFO sightings are, in fact, demons” quote and the broader demons-do-things context
EWTN News (June 3, 2026), additional Catholic press coverage including the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal organizational context
Eurasia Review (June 4, 2026), syndicated coverage including the Rossetti apology statement
CP24 (June 3, 2026), additional verified Rossetti video quote coverage
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, verified statement posted to the Saint Michael Center website on June 3, 2026, including the “I ask forgiveness” and “obedient to the Church” quotes
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, verified YouTube video posted May 29, 2026, including the “speed and all sorts of things” UFO context
New York Post (2021), original profile of Rossetti including the 20-exorcisms-per-week metric and his Diocese of Syracuse background
Associated Press (2023), Rossetti’s verified comments on increasing public interest in exorcism
Vatican Observatory (multiple, 2008-2017), historical Catholic positions on extraterrestrial life including Father José Gabriel Funes and Brother Guy Consolmagno
Catechism of the Catholic Church, specific teaching on devil, demons, and exorcism