The Pope Scope

Here’s an interesting article from The Walrus on Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno who is a Jesuit brother and part of the Vatican Observatory which uses Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope or Pope Scope to scan the heavens.

With his full, greying beard, Consolmagno bears at least a superficial resemblance to the great Italian astronomer. But while Consolmagno is humble and genial, Galileo was brash and argumentative, with an ego that was reportedly off the chart. Galileo’s personality surely played a part in the drama that became known as the “Galileo affair,” but if he was prone to pushing, the Church was even more prone to not bending. And now, 400 years after Galileo first aimed a telescope at the night sky, Consolmagno admits that the Vatican “screwed up.”

Many historians argue that the Galileo affair was, in fact, an anomaly, and that the Church, far from being hostile to science, has been one of its most ardent supporters. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the Church pressed for the most precise astronomical observations, to determine the date of Easter. The Church gave us the Gregorian calendar, used virtually across the globe today. And a glance at a modern moon map reveals some thirty-five craters named for Jesuit clergymen. The Vatican hasn’t just been interested in the heavens, either; early geneticist Gregor Mendel, for example, was an Augustinian monk. Even so, some people have a hard time imagining exactly what the Vatican is looking for from its mountaintop outpost.

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