Pope Francis says if martians came to earth he would baptise them if they wanted to be.
The pontiff made the interplanetary approach during a speech during mass at Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican City to highlight how there were no closed doors to the Holy Spirit.
He said the Spirit blows where it wills, but one of the most common temptations of those who have faith is to bar its path and drive it in one direction or another.
Commenting on the reading for the day from the Acts of the Apostles the Pope noted that a community of pagans welcomed the announcement of the Gospel and Peter was an eyewitness to the descent of the Holy Spirit on them.
First hesitated to make contact with what he had always considered “unclean” and then he suffered harsh criticism from the Christians of Jerusalem, shocked by the fact that their leader had eaten with the “uncircumcised” and had even baptised them.
A moment of internal crisis that Pope Francis recalled, with a hint of irony :”That was unthinkable. If – for example – tomorrow an expedition of Martians came, and some of them came to us, here… Martians, right? Green, with that long nose and big ears, just like children paint them… And one says, ‘But I want to be baptised!’ What would happen?” Continue reading