Pope Francis has appointed Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno as the new director of the Vatican Observatory.
The appointment was announced today by the Holy See Press Office, shortly after the Pope’s audience with participants of a Symposium sponsored by the observatory.
Br. Consolmagno currently serves as the President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation and as curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest in the world.
The Jesuit Brother was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal for “outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist» by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in November 2014.
In an interview with ZENIT in 2013, Br. Consolmagno stressed that science and religion are not enemies. Science and religion, he said, worship the same God, which is Truth.
“Truth is something that you can’t weigh or measure, but it exists as a transcendent, outside of ourselves to which we devote and use as the compass of our lives. I just described God!” he said.
