"As there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, so there may be other beings, intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."

Four hundred years after the Catholic Church prosecuted Galileo for heresy for recognizing that the Earth orbits the Sun, it comes out with this stunner: alien life forms almost certainly exist on distant planets and we should consider them brothers. Considering that there's a greater chance of ETs existing than God himself, I'd say this is a brilliant move on the Church's part.

It's clear what the Vatican is doing: it's positioning itself as peacemaker between the horrifying invading armies of renegade aliens that are standing ready in silent formation on the dark side of the moon and the helpless humans who are stand in the way of all that much-needed liquid water and precious iron ore. The Vatican hopes to spare itself from the wrath of the vengeful, invading hoards. If they succeed, the aliens will allow them stay on Earth to toil in the salt mines or to bury the human carcases of men who dared defy their new ET overlords as it carries away scores of humans to serve as humorous distractions in their intergalactic zoos.

Is there another reason why the Church would waste a breath on the subject of life outside our solar system? Is the Vatican so strapped for good PR that it releases such a nonsense story? No comment on the priest sex abuse scandal for years, but now we know its position how we should regard beings from another planet? Could this story make the Church any more irrelevant than it already is?