The Vatican (Holy See) is the sovereign city-state and seat of the Catholic Church. It appears in UAP discourse primarily through unverified claims that the Catholic Church holds evidence of non-human-intelligence.
david-grusch’s 2023 congressional testimony alleged that pope-pius-xii knew of a 1933 UFO crash near Milan and backchanneled information to the U.S. government, which took possession after WWII. The claim resurfaces in the-age-of-disclosure (2025), where a former CIA official reportedly cites Vatican knowledge of NHI.
The Vatican does not engage publicly with UFO/UAP claims. The vatican-observatory has a stated policy of avoiding the topic in media due to uap-stigma (see guy-consolmagno). Italian-press headlines about “Holy See opens to UFOs” trace to a parish “Cultural Wednesdays” series at St. Anne’s, not an official Holy See engagement.
Galileo rehabilitation as a societal-adaptation analogy (July 2026)
In a July 2, 2026 WION interview (src-loeb-world-ufo-day-interview-2026-07), avi-loeb used the Vatican’s 1992 formal acknowledgment that Galileo Galilei was correct about heliocentrism — plus the historical persecution of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno — as his working analogy for how humanity would calmly absorb eventual proof of non-human-intelligence: “The general public adapted to the new reality without chants for revenge after the Vatican’s 1992 announcement.” Distinct from the page’s existing Grusch/Pius-XII crash-cover-up claims.