Why did Washington’s cardinal fire a well-known exorcist? Cardinal Robert McElroy now says it wasn’t about UFOs — even though his own statement last month suggested otherwise.
Cardinal McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, dismissed Monsignor Stephen Rossetti in June after the priest claimed in a viral video that many UFO sightings might actually be demons. The clip spread fast, landing amid the Trump administration’s release of government UFO files and Vice President J.D. Vance’s own March comment that “they’re demons anyway.”
In a June 3 statement, Cardinal McElroy said Monsignor Rossetti’s UFO-demon claims and social media use “gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching.” But in a June 29 interview published this week by Catholic News Service, he shifted, saying the firing “wasn’t touching on the question of UFOs” and was really about protecting exorcism’s privacy, calling it “a very private one” and “a sacred one.”
Monsignor Rossetti, a psychologist at the Catholic University of America, did not respond to a request for comment. He has said he will continue his exorcism ministry elsewhere.
Catholics are divided. Theologian Dawn Eden Goldstein backed Cardinal McElroy’s privacy rationale, saying it aligns with Church tradition. Others point to the cardinal’s progressive reputation and criticism of the Trump administration’s deportation policy, suspecting politics played a role in the firing.
Read more:
• D.C. cardinal cites privacy in exorcisms for firing priest who claimed UFOs are demons in disguise
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