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 For those of us who were the inquisitive kids at Sunday school, who delighted in pestering the nuns with questions of the kind “If the wafer is really the body of our Lord, does that mean I’m a cannibal?”, we tended to find—disappointingly—that no matter how sticky the topic, the unruffled sisters always had an answer. And so it is with the Church. If ever you’ve wondered how extra-terrestrial life enters into God’s plan, wonder no more: ye shall have an answer. 

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The lead astronomer at the Vatican released a statement Tuesday, that should aliens exist, they are also creatures of God. Preemptively allaying any concerns that the discovery of outer-planetary life would unsettle creationist theory, Father José Gabriel Funes, the Argentinean priest who is head of the Vatican Observatory, asserted that “any aliens would also be part of Creation. This does not clash with our faith because we cannot set limits on God's creative freedom”, thus implying that aliens would share our same God. He went on to say, “if we view earthly creatures as our brothers and sisters, why can’t we speak of a brother from another planet?”

Funes rose to the top of the Vatican’s scientific institution two years ago, after the former head had taken a disagreeable position on evolution. Continuing his musings on our brothers from another planet, he also suggested that if aliens were more evolved than we are, and had maintained a full friendship with their Creator, they might not need saving to enter Heaven. So Rambaldi's E.T. is off the hook, and somewhere, Dennis Kucinich is smiling.