Millions of people all over the world were stunned to learn recently that The Vatican actually has an astronomical observatory, replete with powerful telescope, searching the sky. In fact, the Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world.
Its main research is by the Vatican Observatory Research Group hosted at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. It operates the 1.8m Alice P. Lennon Telescope known as the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.
But what has the Catholic Church been looking for? Angels? Heaven? Perhaps God himself?
Not really. Perhaps the answer can be found in the May, 2008, statement by the director of The Vatican Observatory (Specola Astronomica Vaticana), the Rev. Jose Funes. This priest publicly announced a long-held Vatican position that it’s okay for Catholics to believe in UFO and Aliens from other worlds. By the way, the observatory’s designation specola isn’t simply about astronomy, but also includes aerial phenomena.
I first heard about The Vatican Observatory from Original Seven Project Mercury Astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper, while researching material for my Harper & Row tome “The Space Program Quiz & Fact Book,” published in 1985, and back in print as an eBook later this year. Cooper is on the cover of the book.
At the time I asked astronauts I interviewed if they believed in, or had ever seen, a UFO. Cooper was emphatic that he had never seen a UFO.
“You want to know about UFO and little green men? Contact the Vatican. They have an observatory out in Arizona, and that’s what they are looking for.”
The Vatican? These were the same people who condemned Galileo of heresy and sent him to prison in 1633 for looking in his telescope and saying the sun, moon, and stars didn’t revolve around the Earth. I thought Cooper was joking, but when I checked into it I found it mind-boggling that every Pope since George Washington was President of The United States in 1797 has had an interest in unidentified flying objects, and that The Vatican actually had an observatory looking up at the sky since then!
Years later my jaw dropped when I read an article in which Cooper told about a 1951 UFO encounter he had as an F-86 fighter pilot over Western Germany (a fact he would also include in his 2002 book “Leap of Faith”).
Stunned by this contradiction, I contacted Cooper again. Again he denied ever seeing a UFO. This time his denial was in a hand-written letter.
His denials were explained in his 2002 book ‘Leap of Faith’. In it he confirmed the UFO incident over Germany as well as a UFO encounter during his May 15, 1963 ‘Faith 7’ Project Mercury flight. Meanwhile, in a video taped interview with French author J. L. Ferrando he is on record saying:
“For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public.
Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means.”
“I was furthermore a witness to an extraordinary phenomenon, here on this planet Earth. It happened a few months ago in Florida. There I saw with my own eyes a defined area of ground being consumed by flames, with four indentations left by a flying object which had descended in the middle of a field. Beings had left the craft (there were other traces to prove this). They seemed to have studied topography, they had collected soil samples and, eventually, they returned to where they had come from, disappearing at enormous speed… I happen to know that authority did just about everything to keep this incident from the press and TV, in fear of a panicky reaction from the public.”
A remarkable revelation from a historic figure who sent me a hand-written letter denying he had ever seen a UFO. Now I understand why.
Rev. Funes remarks were published in The Vatican’s newspaper (Osservatore Romano) in May, 2008, and nothing, absolutely nothing, gets into that newspaper if it contradicts or challenges Vatican policy.
Rev. Funes article has generated considerable feedback from Catholics questioning if the Vatican is saying God created more than one world, or if God created us in his own image, how can the Church explain UFO and aliens who don’t look like us?
To such theological questions, the Vatican Observatory’s vice director, Rev. Christopher Corbally, says it would be wonderful to have life beyond our world “because it would show how God’s creation just flows out without abandon.” To think life does not exist beyond Earth, Rev. Funes says, would be to limit God’s creativeness.
Many who believe in UFO and aliens, say perhaps the Vatican knows something we don’t, and are preparing us for the day a UFO lands on the White House lawn, in London, Moscow, or elsewhere, and creatures from another world step out.
“UFO true-believers have been saying all along that the government knows UFO and aliens exist,” Astronomer John Miller told this writer, “but have been covering it up for fear of what it would do to society, the economy, the social fabric, and religion,” So the Vatican releases this information to let people know it’s okay to believe and kind of prepare them for what’s going to happen.”
The original Vatican Observatory was authorized and created by Pope Pius VI in the upper floor of The Vatican’s Gregorian Tower. It was fitted up with a Dolland telescope and other instruments. Observations of eclipses, comets, Jupiter’s satellites, and a transit of Mercury are in manuscripts in the Vatican Library.
Various new scientific instruments, including an astrographic refractor and 16-inch visual telescope, presented to Pope Leo XIII in 1888 were added to the Vatican Observatory in the Gregorian Tower. A second tower was added a year later. By 1904, under Pope Pius X, the 1,300 ft., thousand year old fortification wall had four rotary observatory domes on it. But for some years now the serious work has been done at The Vatican Observatory in Arizona.
In an America On Line pole on June 1, 2008, 75% of respondents said they believe alien life exists.
Reference:
- research files from my 1985 book ‘The Space Program Quiz & Fact Book’ (c) 1985 by Timothy B. Benford
