When Pope Francis issued his groundbreaking encyclical last year, Laudato Si’, the Italian publishing house Elledici took the moment to reissue a book written in the 1960s by the Italian scientist Enrico Medi, Cantico di Frate Sole, a meditation on the Franciscan poem that gave Pope Francis his title.

At that time, they asked me as the “Pope’s astronomer” to write an introduction for the book. This past week, on the first anniversary of the Pope’s encyclical, I was invited to Medi’s home town of Senigallia, on the Adriatic coast, to celebrate the publication of this book.

I had never heard of Medi; but he was the spokesperson of his generation in Italy on faith and science. Reading his words, even with my poor Italian, I can see why.

For example, in one chapter Medi begins with our scientific understanding of water as a marvellous molecule, but he arrives at finding in water a hymn of praise for the virtues of humility and chastity. I was reminded of G.K. Chesterton, who wrote in Orthodoxy: “To St Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”