[In an interview, French journalist Caroline Pigozzi of Paris Match] brought up NASA’s discovery last July of a new planet, Kepler 452 B, which resembles Earth in its dimensions and characteristics, asking whether there could be thinking beings elsewhere in the universe.

“Honestly I wouldn’t know how to answer,” the Pope replied, explaining that while scientific knowledge has until now excluded the possibility of other thinking beings in the universe, “until America was discovered we thought it didn’t exist, and instead it existed.”

“But in every case I think that we should stick to what the scientists tell us, still aware that the Creator is infinitely greater than our knowledge.”

Francis said that the one thing he is sure about in the universe and the world in which we live is that it “is not the result of chance or chaos,” but rather of divine intelligence.

It is the result “of the love of God who loves us, who created us, who desired us and never leaves us alone,” he said.

—from Do Aliens Exist? Pope Francis Responds in New Interview