The Vatican’s astronomer calls Tucson home

By Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. 
Photos by New Outlook and Vatican Observatory 

Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., is a Jesuit brother and a professional astronomer. As the director of the Vatican Observatory, Br. Guy oversees the research work of Jesuit astronomers, diocesan priests, and adjunct scholars who work with the Vatican Observatory in Rome and Tucson. He engages with observatories around the world and gives presentations at conferences. Brother Guy’s own research focuses on the physical properties of meteorites. He writes articles and books, and serves with several astronomical organizations around the globe. From Brother Guy, in his own words: 
 

Many people ask me why the Vatican has an astronomer.  

There are historical, political, and economic reasons. Formally, the Vatican Observatory was established in 1891 when the Vatican wanted to have something to make it look like a nation. But also, at the end of the 19th century, was the beginning of this idea that Church and science are opposed. People think it goes back to Galileo but you read the history, it doesn’t. Until the end of the 19th century, most scientists were either wealthy noblemen or clergymen (because who else had the free time and the education?). If you look at who was publishing the papers, they were all priests.  

There were political reasons. In Italy, there was an anti-clerical group. In America, it was an anti-immigrant group. So, they started this idea that ‘everybody knows Catholics are anti-science and science is the wave of the future.’ Both things were wrong, but it was a very popular idea. Nonetheless, that idea has taken such deep root that you can see examples of it in the oddest places. Ask any American how Christopher Columbus discovered America: ‘He was proving that the world was round.’ That answer comes out of a 19th century anti-Catholic book that has nothing to do with reality. Everybody knew the world was round. Sure, Columbus had weird ideas about the world (that he could carry enough food to get him all the way from Europe to Japan or India). But there was never a question that the world was round. The fact that people were telling Columbus not to do it, for very good reasons as it turns out (if America had not been there, he would’ve been stuck out in the ocean), but this was turned into ‘those Catholic Spaniards don’t like progress.’ 

Tied into that is also this myth that science is going to solve all of our problems; that we are getting smarter and better every year. That is a very dangerous myth because it means that it’s tempting to put off to the future things like care of the planet now: ‘oh someday somebody will come up with a technological fix and we won’t have to worry about it.’ No. That’s not the way this works. You have to do something now. This is what Laudato Si’ was all about. 

To go back to why the Vatican has an observatory, a lot of it is to show the world, especially kids, that not only is the Church not opposed to science, but also that we invented science. It came out of our universities, and we are doing cutting-edge science right now.  

But that’s not why I do science, why any of the other Jesuits do science, or why we go up to the telescope and do the work.  

We’re doing it because, to us, it’s an act of prayer. God made the universe; we encounter God in this universe. When we look to the edges of the universe in the most strange and wonderful places, then we really see the magnificence of God standing out to remind ourselves that the universe is bigger than just ‘what’s for lunch.’ And to me, that’s the most important reason to do astronomy, and this is the astronomy that anyone can do by walking outside and looking up at the sky at night to remind yourself that it’s a big, beautiful universe out there, and wouldn’t it be fun to know more about it! 

Vocation Story 

I was a Sputnik kid; I started kindergarten when Sputnik went up and I graduated high school when people landed on the moon. So of course, space science was in front of me all the time. I went to the Jesuit high school in Detroit and studied classics there, Latin and Greek. I was fascinated by that, but I had no idea what I wanted to do once I graduated.  

I went to Boston College for a year with the idea that maybe I would be a Jesuit. When I talked to the Jesuits there, they had this very odd idea: I should pray about this. (I was 18 years old! Who prays?) But when I prayed, there was this overwhelming realization that I did not have the Vocation to be a priest.  

To put it bluntly, I’m a nerd. I get along fine with people but with the sort of issues that people bring to a clergyman, I’m sort of clueless. And that’s okay; everybody’s got different talents, and that’s not mine. Really, my talent was being a nerd.  

My best friend was at MIT, and I realized that was where I belonged. So I transferred in and took a planetary astronomy course there. I ended up getting my degree in planetary astronomy and then – because I’m a nerd – I wanted a doctorate. Where’s the best place in the world to continue? Arizona! I was one of the very first students at the Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona. I was the fourth in their department’s history to get a doctorate. From there, I went back to Boston and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard and MIT.  

But then, I thought, there’s got to be more to life than studying planets. People are starving in the world, why can’t I do something useful? I turned 30 and that was a big shock to the system, so I decided I was going to quit science and join the Peace Corps. I did a couple of years in Africa in the Peace Corps, saying, “Whatever you need, I will do.” They said, “Great! We need someone to teach astronomy to graduate students at the university!” Everybody in Kenya said, “Wow! Astronomy! Tell us what’s going on!” I suddenly realized that people – any human being – is hungry to know about the universe, their place in it, what we have learned, and what’s it like in space. It hit me that we don’t live by bread alone – going back to ‘there’s more to life than what’s in the refrigerator.’  

After that, I started teaching at a little college in Pennsylvania and I loved it. I thought to myself, if I had been a Jesuit priest, I could’ve been doing this at a Jesuit school, but God told me, on no uncertain terms, that I didn’t have the Vocation to be a priest. But Jesuits also have brothers! As a Jesuit brother, I can live in the community, do the work that I do, and support the people who do have that Vocation to be able to do all the priestly things.  

When I asked my friends if I was crazy to consider being a Jesuit brother, they all said, “Oh! We could’ve told you that!” It’s very frightening when the girl you took to the senior prom tells you should be in religious life – but she was right and we’re great friends to this day.  

Once I entered religious life, I finally realized this is the right place for me. When they saw my background, they said, “We’ve got a place for you!” I only did two years as a novice and two years of philosophy before they shipped me off to Rome in 1993 to be at the Vatican Observatory, where I’ve been ever since. I came to Arizona later in 1993, the very weekend we opened the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) on Mount Graham outside of Safford. 

Why Arizona? 

We had number of telescopes in Rome, but light pollution is the killer.  

Pope Benedict XVI said in a homily on Easter, talking about light and dark, that we human beings create our own lights that blind us to God’s lights. Isn’t that a wonderful image of sin! Putting up artificial lights that make it impossible to see the stars is blinding yourself to what God is trying to tell you. It’s robbing the vision of the stars from everybody around you. You are deliberately closing your eyes to God trying to make himself present to you. 

At that time, they were looking for a dark place to build a telescope. The idea came up to work with the University of Arizona and use their facilities. 

Roger Angel at the university had a bright idea for a new kind of telescope. He was able to successfully show that you can make a mirror with this new technique. The Vatican approved building a telescope around the mirror. To raise money, the Vatican Observatory Foundation was founded. Now we can say, “The pope has a telescope with mirrors made by an Angel.” 

The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) has been around for 30 years. We keep upgrading it because so much of it is computer controlled, and computers have changed so much in 30 years. By this summer, it should be a completely robotized telescope. On occasion, people will still go up Mount Graham, but you won’t have to be on the mountain to use it. It is a long, hard, and dangerous drive up those winding roads. 

We went off to Mount Graham because it was a distant mountain that already had a road. Even from there, you can see a little bit of light from Phoenix and Tucson, despite the strict dark sky laws. It’s a problem everywhere. Any light that is going up is totally useless, but that’s how we tend to light our cities. It wouldn’t take that much to just put shades on the lights to direct it downwards. But it would make a huge difference to astronomy, which is a major industry for the city of Tucson. It’s what brought the optics people here. Any kind of light pollution kills one of the things that fuels Tucson and makes it different from Phoenix. 

We’ve been living here in Tucson now for more than 30 years; this is our home. The support we’ve gotten from the local Church and community has been wonderful. 

Astronomy as a parallel to the Church 

The fascinating thing about astronomy is that no one human being can do it by themselves; it’s always a team effort, it is always a community in constant communication. It’s very social and very Churchlike.  

I see the parallel: people think they can find God on their own; you can’t, not any more than you can find Asteroid Bennu on your own. You need a community of people who have built up the Church, to be able to have the chance of learning something, making progress, not forgetting what had been done before, and having a place where we can learn something and pass it on to other people.  

We need this structure, plus we’re social people – it’s part of who we are. Even a nerd like me needs a community of people. Certainly, there are going to be problems and politics and original sin; we’re a Church of sinners. We’re scientists as sinners: we’ve made mistakes and gotten in each other’s way.  

But at the end of the day, we get ourselves a little closer to God and a little closer to the stars. That’s what makes it all worthwhile. That’s both the pain and the joy of it all. 

A lot of the non-Catholic astronomers are also very religious. When I entered the Jesuits at age 40, I had no idea there were so many church-going astronomers. But when you think of it, it’s not that surprising. 

We are used to living in a world that we know we don’t understand that we know is bigger than us, that is filled with wonder and filled with beauty. That is the draw that’s going to bring us to God. We are all, each in our own ways, searching for the same God. Even the ones who claim not to believe in God, they believe in truth.  

There is a rare astronomer who would try to fake their data to get ahead (besides, they wouldn’t get away with it), because it's not playing the game, it’s not doing the real astronomy. And yet, what is truth?  

We find in the Gospels, when Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Truth is a description of God. We do it because it’s full of joy: what is finding God, but being surprised by joy? (as CS Lewis put it). It underlies all of the ‘why?’ for why we do astronomy. It’s there for the joy we all need and for the perspective that puts every human problem into a perspective that says, ‘Nope, the universe is bigger than that.’ 

The enemy of God is always going to try to tell us, “There is no Truth, there is no Beauty. It’s impossible to find; it’s all just chemicals in the brain.” Sure, it’s chemicals in the brain, but it’s incredibly, phenomenally, wonderful chemistry AND the fact that it is related to something as intangible as beauty or as immeasurable as love, tells us that science is a fabulous tool, but by no means, a complete picture of the universe.  

We’re doing astronomy because it is our human nature to search. That search is ultimately the search for God.