Rome, Italy, Sep 17, 2009 / 14:08 pm
Father Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, said this week there is no opposition between belief in the existence of aliens and at the same time belief in God. This position, he reminded, was held by Father Angelo Secchi, the 18th century Jesuit astronomer and director of the Observatory of the Roman College—today the Pontifical Gregorian University.
In an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, Father Funes explained that Father Secchi was the first scientist to classify the “stars according to their spectrum” and that the existence of aliens “could not be excluded a priori.”