Written by Andrew K. Arnett

Last week, when Steven Spielberg planted a giant billboard in the middle of Times Square to promote his upcoming UFO themed move, UFO enthusiasts the world over were discussing its cryptic symbolism. The poster showed an eyeball surrounded by a silhouette which most people thought was a blue jay. As a result, ufologists were leaping to the conclusion that the film had something to do with CIA neurologist Kit Green who was a member of the Aviary Group— a group operating in the field of ufology and parapsychology, as his code name was “Blue Jay.” Not so fast ufoTwitter.

Today, with the release of the first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day,’ we discover the bird in question is actually a red cardinal. This alludes to another line of thought, one that involves the Vatican. The red cardinal of course is representative of the Vatican because Catholic Cardinals wear red vestments and are key advisors to the Pope. The bird is in fact named after the clergy’s red color. Let’s take a journey then, down the UFO Vatican conspiracy rabbit hole.

To tackle this conspiracy beast, we need to chop it up into easily digestible parts. Let’s start with the head, that is, the beginning. The fact is the Vatican has a long standing interest in astrology, space and the heavens above. And they had the means to do something about. In 1891 they founded the Vatican Observatory, one of the world’s first astronomical research institutions. What did they find? Good question. We don’t know because the Vatican is notoriously tight-lipped on the matter. As well, they had established the Vatican Secret Archives where they stash all their knowledge garnered about cosmic anomalies and/or aliens. Your guess is as good as mine.

All of this came to a head after the Roswell crash and the UFO Flap of 1947. Researchers started digging into the topic and began to link the Vatican with all the UFO activity that started appearing in the skies. With that said, these connections were conveniently swept away with the “conspiracy theory” broom.

In 1968, Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods? which asserted that, “The Church rewrote history to hide humanity’s extraterrestrial origins.” It suggests that ancient structures like Nazca Lines, pyramids and religious texts are evidence of humanity’s contact with aliens, even probably descended from such “galactic pioneers.”

What is interesting is that the Bible and other related texts are chock full of events that can be interpreted as anomalous events, UFOs and encounters with aliens. Some of these texts were explicit on the topic but were then removed by the Church, ie. The Book of Enoch.

Here is another item the UFO community latches on to. It regards Monsignor Corrado Balducci (1923–2008). He was an exorcist for the Archdiocese of Rome, a Catholic theologian of the Vatican Curia, and a close personal friend of the Pope. He asserted through his writings, the existence of demons and extraterrestrials. As a result, researchers claim that Balducci was privy to insider knowledge as well as laying the ground work for soft disclosure.

Andrew K. Arnett is a writer for New Dawn Magazine and author of the book The Crowley Conspiracy available on Amazon.