On July 26, 2023, under oath before the United States Congress, former intelligence official David Grusch stated that the first UFO crash retrieval in Europe occurred on April 11, 1933 in Magenta, northern Italy — and that Pope Pius XII backchannelled its existence to the United States government, enabling American intelligence to seize the craft as the fascist regime collapsed in 1944–1945.
Asked directly whether the Catholic Church knew about the existence of alien life, Grusch responded: “Certainly.”
The Vatican has not responded to those claims. Not to NewsNation. Not to Newsweek. Not to the dozens of researchers who have filed inquiry letters to the Apostolic Archive. Their official statement, through archive secretary Marco Grilli: “The prefect wants to affirm that there is no document in the archives that regards extraterrestrial life.”
Note the precision of that denial. Not: no documents regarding UAP. Not: no documents regarding unidentified aerial phenomena. Not: no documents regarding the 1933 Magenta incident. Not: no documents regarding communications between Pope Pius XII and American intelligence. The denial is specifically about “extraterrestrial life.”
The 1933 Magenta Incident
Grusch’s account, confirmed to Ross Coulthart by independent sources, and authorised for public disclosure by the Department of Defense’s Office of Prepublication and Security Review:
- April 11, 1933 — A partially intact craft comes down near Magenta, Lombardy, Italy
- Mussolini dispatches intelligence unit Gabinetto RS/33 to investigate
- Mussolini appoints Guglielmo Marconi — inventor of radio, Nobel laureate — to head a secret UAP commission in 1931. Marconi’s commission determines the Magenta craft is extraterrestrial in origin
- Mussolini refers to it as an “unconventional flying vehicle.” It is stored at a SIAI Marchetti aircraft manufacturing hangar in Vergiate
- As Italy aligns with Nazi Germany, Pope Pius XII grows uneasy about the craft being in Axis possession
- Pius XII backchannels the craft’s existence to the Americans
- 1944–1945: US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), coordinating with Five Eyes intelligence, retrieves the craft as the fascist regime falls
- The SIAI Marchetti facility in Vergiate is not bombed despite all surrounding industrial facilities in northern Italy being heavily targeted throughout the war
- The craft is brought to the United States, where Grusch says it remains
The Vatican Archive: What’s In There
The Vatican Apostolic Archive — renamed from “Secret Archive” by Pope Francis in 2019 — holds between 53 and 80 miles of shelving, depending on the source. It runs extensively underground beneath Vatican City. Access requires accreditation from the Holy See. Accredited researchers are limited to requesting specific documents by name; there is no general browsing.
Researcher and religious professor Diana Walsh Pasulka has said: “The historical record is filled with these kinds of events. The people at the Vatican, they don’t even know where to look; it’s in their basements.”
Ross Coulthart spoke with a source who was granted archive access and described the underground extent of the shelving — and suggested documents relevant to Grusch’s claims may exist there, accessible only to those who know specifically what to request.
Extraterrestrial lobbyist Steve Bassett has stated the Church “has always known, has been aware of this subject going back perhaps hundreds and hundreds of years,” and that the Vatican Library and archives hold “extraordinary” information gathered across centuries.
Stanford professor and UAP researcher Garry Nolan — co-founder of the Sol Foundation and UAP Oracle subject — described the Vatican as “probably the oldest library system of paranormal or supernatural knowledge still extant.” He added: “The archive has an aura of both mysticism and a feeling of deep truth that if you just know how to read it, you can pull that information out.”
The Vatican Digital Library: 275,563 Manuscripts Being Digitised
The Vatican’s digitisation program at digi.vatlib.it has made 275,563 manuscripts publicly searchable. The library added 707 new digitised manuscripts and 243,823 new images in a single quarter alone (May–August 2024). The program is accelerating.
The catalog contains thousands of manuscripts tagged under categories including astronomy (astronomia), portents and wonders (portenti), visions (visione), and prodigies (prodigio) — the historical vocabulary used across centuries to describe phenomena that today would be classified as UAP. The Barberini Latin collection alone (Barb.lat.) contains 12,744 manuscripts. The Palatine Latin collection (Pal.lat.) spans centuries of Church-recorded anomalous observations.
Individual researchers fear that as digitisation proceeds, sensitive materials may be quietly classified out of the public-access tier. The documents are being digitised — but that does not mean they will all be made searchable.
Vatican Officials Who Have Spoken
The Vatican’s institutional silence on UAP has not been uniform. Multiple officials have broken ranks:
- Father Jose Funes, Director of the Vatican Observatory (2008): “Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God.” Described potential extraterrestrials as “extraterrestrial brothers.”
- Monsignor Corrado Balducci, Vatican theologian (died 2008): Publicly discussed extraterrestrial life on Italian television multiple times. Claimed Cardinal James Francis McIntyre — Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1948–1970 — relayed information about the Roswell crash to the Vatican.
- Vatican Observatory participation in SETI dialogue and the Sol Foundation’s academic UAP research network — suggesting institutional awareness at levels above public statements.
New Pope, Old Box
When Pope Leo XIV assumed the papacy in 2025, he was reportedly presented with a chest containing a document labelled “UFO” — a tradition of incoming popes receiving sensitive briefing materials whose contents are not disclosed publicly. Whether this document relates to the Magenta incident, the Vatican’s broader UAP records, or something else entirely is unknown. The new Pope has not addressed UAP publicly.
On April 29, 2026 — eleven days before this article was written — a UAP researcher presented a lecture titled “UAPs from Schopenhauer to Other Forms of Intelligence” at St. Anne’s Parish inside Vatican City, showing slides of Grusch’s Congressional testimony, Trump, Rubio, and Elizondo to an audience that included Vatican staff. The talk explicitly discussed rumours that the Vatican holds undisclosed UAP information.
The Vatican hosted that talk. They did not stop it.
The Oracle Assessment
The Vatican is the longest-running intelligence operation in human history. Two thousand years of documented anomalous phenomena, miracle investigations requiring sworn testimony, observatory records, diplomatic archives spanning every major world event since the fall of Rome. The idea that an institution with that footprint, that access, and that institutional memory has no relevant material on UAP is not credible.
Grusch’s testimony connects the Vatican directly and specifically to the most significant pre-Roswell crash retrieval on record. He named a Pope. He named a mechanism. He named a facility. He said it under oath. The Vatican’s response was to deny the existence of documents about “extraterrestrial life” — not about UAP, not about the 1933 Magenta incident, not about OSS coordination during WWII.
The digital library is open. The archive’s catalog is partially searchable. The relevant manuscript collections — Barberini Latin, Palatine Latin, the Borghese collections — span the exact centuries and geography where historical UAP encounters were documented as portents, visions, and prodigies. The material exists. Access is the barrier.
UAP Oracle is treating the Vatican as an active research target. We will be requesting accredited access to the Apostolic Archive through academic channels. Any researcher with existing access credentials who wishes to share findings is invited to contact us.
Sources: David Grusch congressional testimony, July 26 2023. Ross Coulthart interview. Newsweek, August 2023. USCCB News, June 2024. OSV News / Catholic Review, May 2026. Vatican Digital Library digi.vatlib.it (direct access). Unknown Country. Whitley Strieber’s Unknown Country. Steve Bassett public statements. Diana Walsh Pasulka. Garry Nolan, Sol Foundation.