One of my tasks as the new director of the Vatican Observatory is answering requests for interviews. They ask all the usual questions; of course, as any good teacher knows, the questions we get over and over are the ones we didn’t answer well the first time. But they also ask me some more interesting questions, as well. Here’s a sampling:Why does the Vatican have an astronomer? My role is to remind the general public, including members of the Church, that our religion embraces good science.Why are you doing astronomy when there are people starving in the world? I learned the answer to that when I served in the US Peace Corps. When my African students learned I was an astronomer, they wanted to look through my telescope. They, too, had an insatiable hunger to know about th