Today’s POV blog

In an apparent departure from scripture, the Vatican is engaging experts to verify or dismiss the possibility of alien life elsewhere in the universe, and the implication that this may have for the Catholic church.

In an article reported by FOXNews.com, Reverend Joe Gabriel Funes, Jesuit priest, astronomer, and director of the Vatican Observatory said, “The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration.”

Thirty Catholic and non-Catholic scientists from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy, and Chile attended a five-day conference called to explore among other issues “whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds.”

In 2008, Reverend Funes published an article in L’Osservatore Romano, the newsletter of the Vatican Observatory (translated here), as reported by Wired.com.

Some theologians believe that the existence of other life forms will be inconsistent with the existence of God — or at least organized religions — while others agree that since God created the universe, he would have created aliens, too.

NASA chief historian Steven J. Dick, author of The Biological Universe, says, “Religion hasn’t gone away after Copernican theory, after Darwin. They’ve found ways to adapt, and they’ll find a way if this happens, too.”