the pope's astronomer i know it's not
your official title but it's a cool
title where does that come from
i don't know where people started using
that in the first place kings had
astronomers in the past maybe that might
be what it's about it's a shorthand way
of saying that i'm not just an
astronomer but i'm an astronomer with an
interesting position with an interesting
job being the director of the
observatory i'm only one of a dozen
astronomers but i'm the only one that's
directly appointed by the pope the real
thing i think is
to remind people that
astronomy is the kind of thing you can't
make a living at unless you have a
patron
and in this case my patron is the pope
and that shows the world that the church
is interested in astronomy
the nickname gives the impression that
the pope would occasionally consult you
on astronomical matters has it ever
happened have you ever got a phone call
from a pope saying i was wondering about
this or that
the closest that ever came was uh
when a pope and i won't even be more
specific than that
was going to be talking to astronauts
and you always have to have some
prepared statement and could i prepare
something for him to say or even things
that might be topics that you know of
course
what happens with all of these world
leaders is that they meet so many people
day in and day out they can't prepare
their talks ahead of time so generally
somebody says here are some talking
points and i did that once when one of
the popes was talking to astronauts
you've served under three popes i
believe what is your interaction with
popes then it's actually very limited um
you know we don't run into each other in
the hallway as a director i'm part of
the big audience every christmas with
all the members of the curia where you
have assigned seatings and my seat is in
the back row off in the corner but you
know i'm in the room that's something
that said the times when i have
interacted when i've been in one of
these audiences
it's kind of scary to say he knows who i
am
he knows my name he knows my background
and
i guess that means i can't hide
but it's also yeah it's an honor
the three popes that you have served
under do they have any interest in
astronomy as far as you know do they
have much of a knowledge of astronomy um
it varied of course varies from popes to
pope the one that everybody can cite has
had a great interest in astronomy was
pius xii
he was himself something of an amateur
astronomer and that would sometimes get
him into trouble as he would make
offhand comments about astronomy that he
had you know 90 percent right and the 10
percent wrong then you have to go while
it's actually like this i'll say of the
three that i worked with
john paul ii was an academic and so he
appreciated academic work and the value
of academic work in and of itself on the
other hand the one time we showed him
images we had made of comet shoemaker
levy he sort of looked at him and said
ah bless you bless your comments and
that's about it when benedict came to
visit
he was full of questions about the
meteorites about the work we did are
very specific he is and is a brilliant
brilliant man the other thing that
everyone is surprised about benedict he
also has a wicked sense of humor and he
was able to give trade jokes academic
kinds of jokes about orders of magnitude
and things like that which showed that
he was definitely following and knew
what was going on
francis has a background in chemistry
he'd worked in chemistry before he
became a jesuit and as a jesuit he's got
the academic background so he's
certainly well aware of what we're doing
the thing that i think shows the depth
of francis's knowledge is la dato c that
encyclical he wrote which not only gets
the science right but he gets what the
science really is it's not just a
listing of facts it's not just uh this
is the mechanism what does it mean what
does it mean in the human sense what
does it mean to us
who will always be a little bit wrong
but we're always striving for the truth
so it gets past the absolutism of
the science you learned in high school
where you know you get the answer in the
back of the book and that's what science
is well no it isn't
and he gets that
why does the vatican have an
astronomical observatory there is a
short answer and a long answer and i'll
give you something in between
really astronomy was one of those things
that you studied in the medieval
universities along with geometry and
arithmetic and music and it was a sense
that you have to know how the universe
works before you can then philosophize
about it or do theology about it one of
the bizarre and wonderful things about
the people of the book the muslims the
jews the christians is that unlike a lot
of religions we think the physical
universe was made by god and therefore
it's a good thing to study you know the
physical world is not a morass that's
designed to trap you into evil chocolate
is not there to lure you into obesity
chocolate is a foretaste of the joy of
heaven
that's at least by theology and that
means that studying the physical
universe in particular cosmology or
astronomy
is certainly a way of getting used to
the way that god works
there is also the practical side of
things a lot of festivals a lot of the
jewish holidays and then from them the
the christian holy days were based on
the calendar easter was the first sunday
after passover passover was based on the
the phase of the moon in the beginning
of the year that of course is why the
popes hired astronomers back in the
1580s to reform the calendar the modern
observatory dates from 1891 at that time
for the first time in almost a thousand
years the vatican was faced with two
very different problems the idea that
somehow studying science studying the
physical universe was against religion
instead of in favor of it
which was a 19th century idea
and which was being pushed by people who
thought that you know science is going
to solve all of our problems steam
engines and electricity and eugenics oh
lord the church wanted to say no that's
not what science is
science is not against religion but
there's certainly bad things you can do
with technology technology is not the
same thing as science
nobody doubts that
atomic bombs work because of fusion of
atomic particles
but that doesn't mean we can't argue
about whether atomic bombs are a good
idea
the other problem the vatican was faced
with was that after 1870 rather than
having its own independent nation in the
center of italy it was reduced to just
that area around saint peter's and the
italians didn't even recognize him as an
independent nation
having a national observatory was a way
of being recognized as a nation so it
had this theological sense and it also
had this practical political sense by
the time of
pius xi in the 1920s and 30s you find
statements where studying astronomy will
lead you to prayer and lead you to an
appreciation of god by the time you get
to john paul ii
he sees science and religion as equal
partners in the goal of looking for
truth
and suddenly science has a very
different role than just being a useful
tool
what francis has done
is to carry that one step further and to
recognize that science
is a human activity
it's not
the universe it's how we humans try to
understand the universe and what that
does to us as humans
you talk about having an observatory
being useful because astronomy can help
inform theology but it sounds like you
know the pope's not picking up the phone
and taking advantage of this resource
that they have here they don't have to
have you do they to inform their
theology well then it seems like a
resource they're not utilizing if it was
simply a one-on-one connection that
would be true
but in fact it's two communities talking
to each other it's the community of all
theologians as a community of all
scientists
and
we are
along that boundary there's you know a
dozen of us doing a dozen different
things
so that under john paul ii for instance
at his insistence
the vatican observatory began a series
of conferences on the nature of divine
action in the physical universe
so that we began this collaboration with
an institute in california called the
center for theology in the natural
sciences published a bunch of deep
theological books that people are still
referencing a lot of the stuff that i do
is popularization
i'm i'm standing up here with a roman
caller and an mit ring this is an mit
ring it's not a bishop's ring don't kiss
it
i write articles for newspapers in italy
in america in england and i show up on
things like this
at the end of the day by existing we
remind the scientists that religion is
not their enemy even more we remind the
religious people that science is not
their enemy does that mean this
department of astronomers that's here
exists a lot because of public relations
it's like a pr move as well public
relations
is
basically all of life
my father was a public relations man
one of the founders of the public
relations society of america i grew up
as a child knowing what public relations
really is it's important
to have that
boundary that glue between the
institution
that knows what it's trying to do
and the people who have a way
that they want to be able to refer to
and communicate with that institution
and so i'm very proud to say that's
absolutely what we're doing
why astronomy why isn't there a little
math department or a chemistry
department or
genetics why why does the vatican have
an astronomy department
first of all the vatican is a dinky
place the entire annual budget of the
vatican
would pay for one and a half hollywood
movies a year
it's not very much
and our budget is a half of one percent
of that so there's not a whole lot of
money to do science
historically
there happened to be astronomers
available when they thought they should
have some kind of national
scientific institute and national
observatories were the sorts of things
that a government would support because
nobody else would there is this
inevitable
gut connection
between studying the sky and studying
things outside of our mundane life and
that means that
by being in this science
we can
both explain why we're not really
studying the same thing because we're
experts in both and we know the
difference but also
to remind us that we do astronomy
just as we pray for something bigger
than to fill our stomach for something
bigger than to get ourselves prestige
that we're doing it
because we're hungry for something more
than what goes into our stomach because
we don't live by bread alone that's
literally true i discovered that working
in the peace corps in africa
that people who were hungry were also
hungry for knowledge were also hungry
for respect
we're hungry for the opportunity to
think and feed their imaginations and
their knowledge
surely you must see some fundamental
clashes between the very underlying
principles of science and the very
underlying principles of religion like
if you said to me brady tell me what
religion is very quickly i'd start
talking about
faith
and a belief in things that can't be
seen or
tested black holes like electrons no
what are these things that we can say no
because because black holes
even even when we can't see them we we
refuse to believe they exist until we
see them and we spend a lifetime trying
to find proof of them and evidence of
them and image them we don't do that to
god like the aim of religion is not to
spend the next hundred years trying to
find evidence of god or image god or
find a horizon around him we have to
just accept he's there whereas science
is all about saying i will not accept
until i can test or look for it
oh my goodness
what you've described is exactly what
religion is
and
what you've described is exactly what
science isn't i'll give you three axioms
every logical system has to believe in
axioms you have to
take
as assumptions this is how the world
works before you can do logic it's
girdle's theorem
and to believe in science you have to
believe the physical universe is real
not every religion believes that you
know it's not just illusion
that there is actually an underlying
reality no matter how bad our senses are
you have to believe that it obeys laws
who was the first person to think that
there were laws in science
well what's the alternative oh the
nature god's doing this and the nature
god's doing that
but christianity doesn't take nature
god's it says there are laws
and you have to believe it's worth doing
that studying the physical universe even
if it's not going to make me rich is
nonetheless a worthwhile thing for
grown-ups to do
those are axiomatic
if you don't accept them you won't be in
an astronomer
you have to take those on faith
likewise
religion
only begins because you have experienced
what is for lack of a better phrase a
religious experience
something real happened whether it's
holding a newborn for the first time in
your life dealing with the death of a
loved one or
just that walking down the street and
suddenly you're out of nowhere hit and
overwhelmed with
a feeling an emotion a desire that you
can't put your finger on what that's
about
and then you say okay how do i deal with
this how have people dealt with it in
the past
what works what doesn't and just like
science
you don't want to try to make it all up
on your own you don't want to have to
reinvent the wheel you want to find out
what has worked for other people in the
past
an awful lot of religion only makes
sense as you get older and you
experience something and you go ah
that's what they were talking about
but the trouble is so many people
stopped learning religion when they were
12
and don't carry that into their rest of
their lives
just as too many people stopped learning
science when they were 12 and they think
that science is getting the answer in
the back of the book
when it's anything but that
it is
living with the mystery and continually
understanding it so that you go oh
that's what they mean by an electron
i never understood it that way before
science always comes up with better
descriptions knowing that better
descriptions yet are to come
science doesn't prove math proves
science doesn't science is not
mathematics
and even the things that we've assumed
conservation of energy what's
fundamental to accept conservation of
energy doesn't work in atomic physics
and then you've got to kind of have
something else maybe being conserved
and likewise
doubt is essential to religion doubt is
essential to faith
the opposite of faith isn't doubt
the opposite of faith is certainty
so do you have any doubt that god exists
of course all the time
and i have worries about the science
that i do
and
i've got all of these theories many of
which i learned from my professors gee
is it just a weird coincidence that my
professors were always right and the
other professors were wrong i'd better
have doubt about that
because the goal ultimately is to come
to truth
the goal isn't to prove i was right
because i wasn't and i'm never going to
be right
science is a bunch of human invented
explanations for the physical universe
as human inventions i can always
understand them but they're always going
to be a little bit short of the truth
religion
are truths that i have to deal with
but that i will never completely
understand
and if i ever think that it's finished
and it's done and it's all packaged and
it can be in a book it's dead
and that faith is dead and that science
is dead
should humans be striving for evidence
of god's existence
no
i think that's backwards
what you strive for
is understanding
the experiences of life that we have
and there are different ways you can go
about with that understanding to me i
choose as one of my axioms
that there is a god underneath behind
supporting all of this
and with that axiom i then try to say
what can i say about this god how does
that make sense of this universe does
this axiom work
now if i come up with a contradiction
my answer is not to throw away the axiom
but to say
i'm about to learn something new
because to be honest i've never
encountered a moment where this bit of
science contradicted this bit of
religion
but i have all the time run into
problems where this bit of science
contradicted this bit of science
and when the two bits of science don't
agree that i'm about to learn some new
science
but isn't religion kind of designed to
avoid that collision with science well i
would also say the same of science
the difference is that they are not
competing systems
nor are they competing books of facts
where oh my gosh this book says one
thing and that book says the other thing
i've got to choose
one is truth or
seeking understanding and the other is
understanding seeking the truth they're
both dealing in the same playing field
but they're playing different games
can i ask you a personal question then
if you had to give up science or
religion
you had to give one up which would it be
i couldn't you couldn't i could not i
could not be who i am
and not
any baby who's trying to figure out
where its toes are is a scientist
and any baby
who is hoping that there will be a meal
or somebody to change its diaper is
already believing in something outside
of itself
that it needs
and forget about feed and forget about
diaper the need for love you cannot be a
human being without having both and this
this infuriates people when i say this
when other people say this
but everyone has a religion and
everybody is a scientist
some of us are just really bad at it
a lot of scientists who i have met over
the years i would describe as atheists
and some i would even describe as being
quite hostile to religion you obviously
move in a lot of scientific circles and
you know conferences and you know you're
an astronomer do you ever encounter
hostility to being a representative of
the vatican but also being a
representative of science
yes
not very often
the people who have been hostile
how can i put this
have been white
elderly
british
males
it's this really narrow
group of people who i suspect were
brought up with really bad religion
classes and you know had a horrible
experience when they were 14
and the religion they don't believe in i
don't believe in either what's their
angle of attack
i haven't encountered enough of them
deeply enough to be able to say that i
could generalize from that there are a
couple who
i think maybe come from
stereotypically religious backgrounds
and want to break out of that stereotype
they want to say no i'm more than just
the evangelicals that i grew up with or
the whatever and so i can see that as a
sense of attempting to want to
assimilate into a larger culture
a lot of it is insecurity most
fundamentalists of religion or science
are insecure
you have to have a certain arrogance to
say i don't know and i can live with
that
but i'll tell you the other thing that
happened to me being in america and
being an astronomer
when i became a jesuit i had already
been in the field 15 years everybody
knew me they didn't know i was catholic
because not one of the things you talk
about
and
the most common reaction was
i didn't know you go to church
let me tell you about the church i go to
and i go i didn't know you go to church
either there's two of us don't tell
i think in astronomy it's a lot more
common than other fields i think biology
is probably where you find the largest
number of atheists because the biology
is still in the 19th century trying to
find the gears and lovers of how life
works i understand that
um
what people have told me is that
the proportion of people who identify as
atheists or believers
isn't so much
whether you're a scientist or not a
scientist it's what culture you come
from what is your community where did
you grow up who were the people you grew
up with
the fact is that you know religious
people have been doing science and
science was invented
i've got a copy here this is one of the
volumes of the philosophical
transactions so i pulled this one out it
turns out to be 1816. you put it at
random i saw you opening page who are
the people who are publishing sir
humphrey davey
frederick herschel
humphrey davey again the reverend abram
robertson d d
frs doctor of divinity and fellow the
royal society savilion professor of
astronomy at the university of oxford
and radcliffian observer you find if you
go looking through the philosophical
transactions or any of these other 17th
18th 19th century books about a quarter
of the people publishing scientific
works were the reverend so-and-so who
else had the education and the free time
to do that kind of work and for that
matter what does a scientist do
actually day to day you collect data you
sort data your file data it's clerical
work right
why do they call it clerical
it was done by clerics
do you think there are any ways in which
being a religious person and a man of
faith gives you an advantage doing
science
being at the vatican gives me a
tremendous advantage i don't have to
write grant proposals oh my lord that's
such an advantage i can do long-term
research projects that may take 10 or 15
years to come to fruition but beyond
that
the bigger advantage to me is it reminds
me why i'm doing it
i'm not doing it to get tenure i'm not
doing it to show up the guys at arizona
state i'm not doing it to be rich or
famous or any of those other
foolish things that would get in the way
of being willing to admit i was wrong
when i was wrong
i'm doing it ultimately because if i
think that science is a way of
worshiping god
then it means i have to worship truth
and that has to mean that i know i don't
have the truth
because otherwise why would i be looking
for it
it has to mean that
i'm willing and desirous to hear anybody
else who has the truth
whether i like what school they went to
or
what politics they have
let me talk to you about the g word
galileo
surely he is a millstone around your
neck working for the vatican
oh thank god for galileo if he wasn't
around i wouldn't have a job
because i have an interest in history
because i knew taking this job people
were going to ask me about galileo i did
a lot of reading i did a lot of research
not only the popular books but the
scientific works the story the true
history is fascinating and it's oh so
much more complicated and so much more
wonderful and basically everything you
know about galileo is probably wrong it
doesn't make the church look any better
the church screwed up the popes screwed
up
and the two important questions to ask
is how
did they screw up and why did they screw
up and what can we learn from that if
you think it was because the church was
anti-science then you're missing the
point that wasn't the problem the
problem was something else
maybe it was
pope's using the power of the papacy for
their own private revenge
some people think that i'm not sure that
maybe it was galileo being tied up in
the politics did you know that the
galileo trial occurred at the very
height of the 30 years war which was the
first world war involved every nation in
europe it was a vicious and nasty and
horrible war and the pope was under
phenomenal political pressures as was
galileo's family supporting him in
florence is it just a coincidence that
galileo who had been a friend of the
pope and had been having great times
suddenly when all the battles started
going in a different direction found
himself in trouble maybe it was just a
coincidence the written record
only tells you half the story as any
historian can tell you the stuff that
everybody knows that they don't have to
write it down is the stuff that we don't
know anymore if there's one thing that
you'd like people interested in this
topic to know that maybe they don't know
what is it i would love to get across
the sense that galileo was very much a
person of his times he was not a 21st
century scientist trapped
in the 17th century and to understand
him and the pressures you have to know
he was living at the same time as
cervantes writing don quixote at the
same time as shakespeare's later plays
at the same time as goya painting in
strange new ways he was at a time of
revolution in thought
and the revolution hadn't finished
it was still ongoing
and that's what makes him such a
wonderful person and someone for whom
the catholic church
should well be proud
let me talk to you about another thing
the creation story are you glad that's
in the bible yes
yes and i'll tell you why
where did the creation story come from
the first chapter of genesis where was
that written
well you can get a hint from the fact
that the sort of cosmology they're
describing is babylonian cosmology even
to the point where the babylonians had
this myth that the gods were at war and
a dragon died and that by accident
created the universe the name of the
dragon in the babylonian myth is the
name for chaos used in in genesis it's
the same word so it's not that genesis
is repeating the babylonian myth
genesis is assuming that whoever is
reading us has already heard the
babylonian myth
and what genesis is saying here's what's
different
from the babylonians
what's different is that it wasn't done
by accident
god deliberately says
what's different is that the god who's
saying that is already there in the
beginning in the beginning god
the difference is that
rather than occurring
as a chaotic accident it occurs in a
logical step-by-step
series of events
that can be reasoned out
every step along the way the god who is
responsible and chose to make this
happen says this is good
and here's the best part
the end and the point of the babylonian
myth is to show that the city of babylon
is the greatest thing that's ever going
to come along the bike
that's not the point of the genesis
story
where does the genesis story end
what is the climax the ultimate goal of
creation
it's not people that's the sixth day
it's the day of rest
it's the seventh day
it's the day
when we stop worrying about how are we
going to eat how are we going to stay
warm and instead we give ourselves a day
to think about the bigger questions
to think about who are we where did we
come from who loves us what is the
source of this love what is this
universe
god created us to be
astronomers you have this interpretation
of the genesis story which is poetic or
insightful
a lot of people alive today don't have
that interpretation they take it more
literally most of the people who take it
literally are the atheists who use it as
a reason not to believe in god there are
actually very darn few literalist
fundamentalists out there
but they seem to get all the press yeah
it happens so you think there aren't
many people who take it literally so
doesn't not only that
it's again a sign of fundamentalism it's
a kind of fundamentalism that's afraid
to let go of
any bit of truth that i have
because
they're afraid if they're wrong god
won't love them
you know maybe i'm wrong
but god will still love me even though
i'm wrong why didn't god when he
inspired the writing of scripture give a
more
true scientific truthful literal account
of what happened oh
why didn't why didn't god inspire the
bible to say in the beginning there was
nothing except me and then i did this
and then over a billion years this
happened and over another billion years
this happened why did he why did he make
it seem so fantastical
not not that real creation isn't
fantastic open
that description would have seemed
fantastical to anyone up to 50 years ago
and that description would seem
primitive in a thousand years
there is no description other than
poetry that could possibly be timeless
that's quite a good answer i'll give you
that
i liked that answer i'll remember that
one
tell me about the observatory now tell
me about the type of science you're
doing here well as i think i've
mentioned before one of the great
advantages working at the vatican is we
don't have to worry about grant
proposals i don't have to show results
after three years or also i don't get my
job and that means the work that we tend
to do complements the work of our
colleagues everybody at the
observatory's got a phd from a major
university someplace we've all got
colleagues we've worked with we've all
got colleagues that
we're in a field that we're still
continuing to interact with
i'm not going to do the kind of work
that somebody else is getting paid to do
a lot better than the more money i've
got they've got the better equipment
they've got the the bigger department
i'm going to do the work that i can do
that supports the bigger project in our
meteorite lab we happen to have more
than a thousand samples of meteorites a
little bit of every type of meteorite
that's out there we are measuring
physical properties density porosity
magnetic susceptibility of thermal
properties like heat capacity and just
making tables for how these vary among
the different types it's a work of 20
years kind of almost like grunt work but
it is absolutely grunt work and yet
great science comes out of it there's
been a question of trying to
understand stars and clusters soon after
they're formed in terms of their spectra
especially because the stars tend to be
in dusty parts of the galaxy and the
dust interferes with the colors how can
you see through the dust well we've got
people here who have worked out using a
series of very cleverly chosen filters
to be able to characterize the type of a
star regardless of the dust that it's
going through
it's taken them 20 years to work that
out they've got this system we're now
going and exploring
embedded stellar clusters to give us a
better idea of
essentially the
the census of the galaxy
where are the stars being formed now how
are these stars different from stars
being formed elsewhere you can only do
that by a survey of lots of different
types of stars galaxies themselves
interact they collide with each other
they orbit each other one of our
astronomers working with colleagues in
america has worked out how the collision
of galaxies around the andromeda galaxy
can explain now the stars that we see in
the halo around the galaxy and makes you
realize that galaxies are not closed
systems galaxies interact with each
other they trade stars they trade
material this seems to be a bigger theme
of
you know we used to think the earth was
a place until we realized stuff is
falling in on the earth well the solar
system is a place now we're seeing
interplanetary objects hitting the solar
system well our galaxy is a place no
we're seeing interactions with other
galaxies the universe is not only a lot
bigger than we thought a hundred years
ago
but it's not isolated every bit is
eventually chemically and physically
touching every other bit
how much longer are you the pope's
astronomer for in times past you'd be
astronomer for life and that was much
too long the director before me made a
rule a five-year term you could renew it
for five years my first five years are
up um probably i'll get another five
years but by then i'll be in my early
seventies and it'll be time to turn it
over to somebody else what do you hope
to achieve before you finish what's like
how do you want this place to be
different or what would be what would
make you pleased with your tenure
what i want it to be and what i think
we've already got is a place where
people want to come and work where
people are happy doing the science
they're doing excited to get up in the
morning and go to the lab and if i can
accomplish that then i can be
someone who has made science fun
it's really easy for science to become
just a job
and a pretty boring job and you spend
most of your time staring at a computer
screen wondering what am i doing and you
know i'm
you forget
why you went into it in the first place
you forget the joy that comes
and if i can have the observatory be
a source of joy not only to us but to
our colleagues to remind the other
scientists that at the end of the day
we're in it
for the love of it
ultimately it's love that makes these
things move around
dante had it right
that's what i hope we can be at the
vatican observatory
make sure you also check out our tour of
the papal telescopes
i'm opening up with my bare hands
brother guy that video is on our channel
deep sky videos and over on objectivity
we'll be showing you the pope's
meteorites and this piece of the moon so
there you have it people a
scientifically boring piece of moon rock
all sorts of interesting things in the
vatican observatories collection there
are links on the screen and of course in
the video description