This was the statement that the Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes stated in a May 2008 interview titled "The Extraterrestrial is my brother."
Examiner.com provides a full story as the Vatican prepares for Extra Terrestrial Disclosure.
Excerpts:
The Vatican has just completed a five day conference astrobiology where scientists convened to discuss the detection and implications of extraterrestrial life. A major driving force behind the conference was the Director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes. In May 2008, Funes gave an interview to the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano newspaper saying that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials posed no problems to Catholic theology. The conference itself was officially convened by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, chaired by its religious leader Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, and was held on private Vatican grounds from November 6-10. Together with Funes' 2008 interview and subsequent public comments by him, the conference demonstrates a welcome openness by the Vatican on the possibility and implications of extraterrestrial life. The Vatican's openness to discussion of extraterrestrial life is no accident. It is part of an openness policy secretly adopted by the United Nations in February 2008. In fact, the Vatican is playing a leading role in preparing the world for extraterrestrial disclosure.
The Vatican sponsored astrobiology conference was a landmark event. It showed that the Vatican was willing to officially sanction public discussions on the existence of extraterrestrial life. More significantly, it showed that the Vatican was willing to initiate a comprehensive dialogue on the theological implications of the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The Vatican's astrobiology conference is yet one more sign that major global institutions are preparing for some kind of formal disclosure concerning UFOs and/or extraterrestrial life. This is a direct outcome of a series of landmark meetings at the UN beginning in February 2008 that led to the adoption of a new openness policy.
After more than a year of openness, the Vatican is taking the openness policy to a new level, and preparing the public for some kind of formal extraterrestrial disclosure announcement. Numerous independent sources have predicted such disclosure is imminent, and that the Obama administration is expected to play a prominent role. The Vatican is also positioning itself to play a major role in such an announcement and in a post-disclosure world. Its emerging theological position that extraterrestrials "are our brothers" is a welcome departure from more hostile depictions of extraterrestrial life found in some religious denominations and in Hollywood movies. On the other hand, the idea that the Vatican could justify sending missionaries to convert extraterrestrials born without original sin, does raise major concerns. The Vatican, nevertheless, is currently playing a constructive role in preparing the public for the imminent disclosure of extraterrestrial life.
Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-2383-Honolulu-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m11d12-Vatican-prepares-for-extraterrestrial-disclosure
