#20. Astronaut Pope?

 

For centuries, the Catholic Church has been home to some of the world’s keenest minds in science and mathematics. Jesuit scholars charted the heavens, monks preserved the works of Euclid and Aristotle, and Vatican mathematicians even helped reform the calendar itself — giving us the Gregorian system we still use today. But for all its intellectual contributions, the Church hasn’t always been on the friendliest terms with scientific discovery. Just ask Galileo, who made the mistake of saying Earth revolved around the Sun and was promptly invited to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.

It took more than two hundred years and one forward-thinking pope to begin mending that celestial rift. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII established the Vatican Observatory — officially called the Specola Vaticana — with a clear mission: to show the world that faith and reason could, in fact, coexist. The Pope’s hope was to prove that the Church wasn’t afraid of the stars anymore. Four centuries after condemning a man for looking through a telescope, the Vatican decided to buy one.

Over time, the Vatican’s team of Jesuit astronomers built an impressive résumé. They’ve studied galaxies, planetary formation, and comets — and they now maintain one of the largest meteorite collections in the world. Their research contributes to the same global understanding of the cosmos shared by NASA and other major institutions. The observatory’s current director, Brother Guy Consolmagno, holds a PhD from MIT and once worked with NASA before trading lab coats for clerical collars. When asked why the Vatican studies space, he famously said, “We do it because it’s cool.”

Eventually, even the Eternal City wasn’t eternal enough to escape light pollution. As Rome’s glow outshone the night sky, the observatory packed up its telescopes and relocated to the Pope’s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. But as cities grew brighter, the stars grew dimmer, so the Vatican did what any dedicated astronomer would do — it moved again, this time all the way to Arizona. There, on a mountaintop surrounded by cacti instead of cardinals, the Church operates the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT). The Holy See, it seems, now has a clear view of heaven from the desert.

Today, the Vatican Observatory quietly continues its mission from two hemispheres — one in Italy, one in the American Southwest. Its Jesuit scientists lecture, publish research, and mentor young astronomers from around the world. It’s a humble reminder that curiosity isn’t a sin — it’s a calling.

Faith and science may have once been at odds, but now they share the same sky. So while we don’t have an Astronaut Pope just yet, give it a few centuries — the Vatican already has the launchpad.