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Dialogue in Bellaria



SITCHIN AND VATICAN THEOLOGIAN DISCUSS UFO's,
EXTRATERRESTRIALS, ANGELS, CREATION OF MAN

Report by Zecharia Sitchin



In what must be a historic first, a high official of the Vatican and a
Hebrew scholar discussed the issue of Extraterrestrials and the
Creation of Man, and though different from each other in upbringing,
background, religion and methodology, nevertheless arrived at common
conclusions:

* Yes, Extraterrestrials can and do exist on other planets
* Yes, they can be more advanced than us
* Yes, materially, Man could have been fashioned from a
pre-existing sentient being.



The Participants

The high Vatican official was Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Catholic
theologian with impressive credentials: A member of the Curia of the
Roman Catholic Church, a Prelate of the Congregation for the
Evangelization of Peoples and the Propagation of the Faith, leading
exorcist of the Archdiocese of Rome, a member of the Vatican's
Beatification Committee, an expert on Demonology and the author of
several books. Appointed in the Vatican to deal with the issue of
UFO's and Extraterrestrials, he has made in recent years
pronouncements indicating a tolerance of the subjects; but he has
never before met and had a dialogue with a Hebrew scholar, and gone
beyond prescribed formulations to include the touchy issue of the
Creation of Man.

The Hebrew scholar was me -- Zecharia Sitchin: A researcher of
ancient civilizations, a biblical archaeologist, a descendant of
Abraham.

The Monsignor and I almost met for such a dialogue last December, but
it did not come about. This time we were scheduled to meet in
Bellaria, Italy, at a conference whose theme was "The Mystery of Human
Existence." I arrived there with my wife and a score of fans from the
USA, on March 31st, scheduled to address the audience of over a
thousand the next day. The Monsignor was nowhere in sight; but he was
there the next morning to hear my presentation. "I drove the whole
night from Rome to hear you," he said.




Sitchin's Presentation

My talk, ably translated by my Italian editor Tuvia Fogel, included a
slide presentation that added a pictorial dimension to the evidence
from ancient times in support of Sumerian texts, on which my eight
books based the following conclusions:

We are not alone -- not just in the vast universe, but in our own
solar system; There is one more planet in our solar system, orbiting
beyond Pluto but nearing Earth periodically; Advanced
"Extraterrestrials" -- the Sumerians called them Anunnaki, the Bible
Nefilim -- started to visit our planet some 450,000 years ago; And,
some 300,000 years ago, they engaged in genetic engineering to upgrade
Earth's hominids and fashion Homo sapiens, the Adam. In that, they
acted as Emissaries for the Universal Creator -- God.



The Dialogue

"We have much to talk about," Msgr. Balducci said to me as he came
forward to congratulate me on my presentation; "I have great esteem
for your scholarship," he said.

We returned to the hotel for lunch. Our table was surrounded in a
semi-circle by my American fans, intent on not missing a word of the
forthcoming dialogue. In the hours-long session, Msgr. Balducci
outlined the positions he was going to state, from a prepared text, in
his talk the next day. While my approach was based on physical
evidence, his was a purely Roman Catholic theological-philosophical
one, seeking the spiritual aspects. Yet, our conclusions converged.



Msgr. Balducci's Positions

ON UFO's. "There must be something in it." The hundreds and
thousands of eyewitness reports leave no room for denying that there
is a measure of truth in them, even allowing for optical illusions,
atmospheric phenomena and so on. As a Catholic theologian such
witnessing cannot be dismissed. "Witnessing is one way of
transmitting truth, and in the case of the Christian religion, we are
talking about a Divine Revelation in which witnessing is crucial to
the credibility of our faith."

ON LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS: "That life may exist on other planets is
certainly possible... The Bible does not rule out that possibility.
On the basis of scripture and on the basis of our knowledge of God's
omnipotence, His wisdom being limitless, we must affirm that life on
other planets is possible." Moreover, this is not only possible, but
also credible and even probable. '"Cardinal Nicolo Cusano (1401-1464)
wrote that there is not a single star in the sky about which we can
rule out the existence of life, even if different from ours."

ON INTELLIGENT EXTRATERRESTRIALS: "When I talk about
Extraterrestrials, we must think of beings who are like us -- more
probably, beings more advanced than us, in that their nature is an
association of a material part and a spiritual part, a body and a
soul, although in different proportions than human beings on Earth."
Angels are beings who are purely spiritual, devoid of bodies, while we
are made up of spirit and matter but still at a low level. "It is
entirely credible that in the enormous distance between Angels and
humans, there could be found some middle stage, that is beings with a
body like ours but more elevated spiritually. If such intelligent
beings really exist on other planets, only science will be able to
prove; but in spite of what some people think, we would be in a
position to reconcile their existence with the Redemption that Christ
has brought us."



The Anunnaki and the Creation of Man

Well then, I asked Msgr. Balducci, does it mean that my presentation
was no great revelation to you? We appear to agree, I said, that more
advanced extraterrestrials can exist, and I use science to evidence
their coming to Earth ...I then quote the Sumerian texts that say that
the Anunnaki ("Those who from heaven to Earth came") genetically
improved an existing being on Earth to create the being that the Bible
calls Adam.

My conclusion regarding your presentation, Msgr. Balducci answered, is
that more than anything else your whole approach is based on physical
evidence, it concerns itself with matter, not with spirit. This is an
important distinction, "because if this distinction is made, I can
bring up the view of the great theologian, Professor Father Marakoff,
who is still alive and is greatly respected by the Church. He
formulated the hypothesis that when God created Man and put the soul
into him, perhaps what is meant is not that Man was created from mud
or lime, but from something pre-existing, even from a sentient being
capable of feeling and perception. So the idea of taking a pre-man or
hominid and creating someone who is aware of himself is something that
Christianity is coming around to.The key is the distinction between
the material body and the soul granted by God."



From Anunnaki to God

Yes, I responded to the Vatican theologian, in my writings I deal with
the physical evidence; but already in my first book (The 12th Planet),
the very last sentence of the last paragraph raises the question: If
the Extraterrestrials "created" us, who created them on their planet?

From this my own thinking and the contents of my subsequent books
evolved toward the spiritual or "divine" aspects. The Anunnaki, I
have explained, were just emissaries (and that is what the Hebrew word
Malachim, translated Angels, means). They thought that it was their
decision to come here for selfish reasons and to fashion us because
they needed workers; but in truth they only carried out the Almighty
God's wishes and plans.

If such Extraterrestrials were so involved, Msgr. Balducci said, even
by your own interpretation they had to do with Man's physics, body and
rationality: but God alone had to do with the Soul!

My second book, that deals with Man's aspiration to ascend the
heavens, is titled The Stairway to Heaven, I told Msgr, Balducci, "it
seems to me that we are ascending the same stairway to heaven, though
from different steps," I said.

We ended the dialogue as friends, determined to stay in touch and
continue.



Reproduction is permitted if accompanied by the statement

© Z. Sitchin 2000
Reproduced by permission.