What do you tell a room of bright high-school science students? That has been my challenge recently, visiting Jesuit high schools across North America. Pope Leo XIII wanted the Vatican Observatory to show the world how the Church supports science; while the other Jesuits have been doing the science, I’ve been “showing the world”.

The hardest but most important message for these students to hear is the need to look beyond the maths and sciences they love, and to treasure as well other course work that they might find more difficult to appreciate.

Science is a field of exciting ideas; but it is the arts that provide an essential education in how to communicate those ideas. Communication is exactly the skill that every scientist needs to master. If you can’t tell people what you did, you might just as well not have done it. Your colleagues must be able to understand your results; but more than that, you need to be able to give a clear, compelling explanation as to why your results matter. (And why anyone should give you a grant to do more of it.)