Stephen Rossetti had spent years as one of the most visible exorcists in the Archdiocese of Washington. His job was, literally, to confront the devil. What no one expected was that he would be expelled precisely for talking too much about him.
On June 4, 2026, Archbishop Robert McElroy removed him after Rossetti posted on social media that “many, if not most” UFO sightings could be demons manifesting in the physical world. McElroy’s response was forceful: those statements “seriously undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons, and exorcism”. The archdiocese also cut ties with the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, which Rossetti directed.
The timing is hard to ignore: it comes exactly when the Pentagon began declassifying files on unidentified anomalous phenomena by order of Trump, and just weeks after Vice President JD Vance — a Catholic — publicly stated that extraterrestrials are “demons”. Rossetti received the news with sadness and apologized. The question left hanging is when, exactly, talking about the devil became incompatible with being an exorcist.