Extraterrestrial Life and the Vatican.

Fr. Jose Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict, said recently that there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
I was sent a link to the story by a non-Catholic friend (without editorial comment).This fellow often sends links to any story that mentions the Vatican.....I'm not sure why he sent this one.
Was he trying to get a rant from me?
I don't have a problem with anything the good Father said.He didn't say the universe was populated by little green men with antenna, but rather, that it's conceivable that life exists outside this planet.Is that so far-fetched?
Reuters reports this concerning Funes and his remarks,
"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.
Asked if he was referring to beings similar to humans or even more evolved than humans, he said: "Certainly, in a universe this big you can't exclude this hypothesis".
George Noory of Coast to Coast AM sees this announcement by Funes as a way for the "powers that be" to prepare us for an upcoming announcement that we are already being visited by ETs. Of course, Noory never met a kook he didn't bond with and I can't take seriously anything he has to say on the matter.