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The Catholic church isn't ruling out alien life forms... The search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God, the Pope's chief astronomer said, adding that some aliens may even be innocent of the original sin. "As an astronomer I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe," Jose Gabriel Funes said in an interview with the Vatican mouthpiece, the Osservatore Romano.

Even if "we don't currently have any proof... the hypothesis" of extraterrestrial life cannot be ruled out, said Funes, a Jesuit priest who directs the Vatican's observatory at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome. "Just as there are a plethora of creatures on Earth, there could be others, equally intelligent, created by God," he said.

Original sin, which by Christian tradition occurred in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of a particular tree, refers to the fallen state from which humans can be saved only by God's grace. Asked about the difficult theological question, Funes said: "If other intelligent beings exist, it's not certain that they need redemption." They could "have remained in full friendship with their creator" without committing the original sin, he said. If not, extraterrestrials would benefit equally from the "incarnation", in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, assumed earthlings' flesh, body and soul in order to redeem them, which Funes called "a unique event that cannot be repeated".

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