Jesuit scientist named new director of Vatican Observatory

Pope Francis on Friday named Brother Guy Joseph Consolmagno, S.J. as the new director of the Vatican Observatory.

A US Jesuit and a regular contributor to The Tablet, Br Consolmagno is the current president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, as well as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest in the world.

His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system.

He was honored for his work by the International Astronomical Union in 2000 with the naming of an asteroid after him, the "4597 Consolmagno," a small, 12-mile-wide rock orbiting near the sun.

Br Consolmagno, 52, a member of staff at the observatory since 2000 and a director since 2006, is the co-author of five books on astronomy, including the book “Would You Baptise an Extra-Terrestrial,” the title of which recalls a homily by Pope Francis earlier this year when he said he would baptise a Martian "if they asked" in order to illustrate that no one should be excluded from the Church.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Br Consolmagno was a post-doctorate lecturer at Harvard College Observatory and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before serving in the US Peace Corps in Kenya where he taught physics and astronomy. He entered the Jesuit order in 1989.

During a meeting with the observatory staff on the same day of the appointment, Pope Francis said: "The church urgently needs religious who dedicate their lives to being on the very frontiers between faith and human knowledge, faith and modern science."