Father Richard D'Souza has been named Chief Astronomer of the Vatican, which is apparently a real thing.
From his educational background, he seems like a smart guy:
-BSc Physics, St. Xavier's College, University of Mumbai, India, 2002
-MSc Physics, University of Heidelberg, Germany, 2005
-Bachelors in Philosophy, Jnana Deepa Vidyapeth, Pune, India, 2007
-Bachelors in Theology, Jnana Deepa Vidyapeth, Pune, India, 2011
-Phd in Astronomy, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, 2016
So when the news media interviewed this brilliant mind and new addition to the Vatican, they naturally asked about aliens.
From Father Richard:
Yes, yes. Theology would have to reimagine itself and take into consideration these other beings. They are all part of God's creation. They would be children of God. I believe in a benevolent Creator. He is behind everything.
He did admit there might be a few obstacles to performing a baptism on an alien:
We do believe that baptism has to be in presence. The question would be how to reach them or how they would reach us. These are the practical problems to solve before we even talk about baptism.
That said, he remains skeptical that extraterrestrial life will ever be found.
We have historically looked for signals coming from outer space, and over the last 30 years, we have found none. None.
The story kicked off a bit of a, um ... "theology debate" on the internet:
Well, if humans ever do contact aliens, at least we know the Vatican is prepared to make them Christians.
I went ahead and asked AI to give me an accurate depiction of what this would look like, you know, for science.
Bring on the Christianterrestrials!
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