(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 06.16.2025).- On the morning of Monday, June 16, in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Leo received in audience the participants of the summer school of the Vatican Observatory.
The Pope spoke about how the James Webb Space Telescope allows us “to peer deeply into the atmospheres of exoplanets where life may be developing” and to study the very origins of our universe. Some have interpreted these words as a kind of openness to the possibility of life on other planets.
The Pope linked this modern marvel with ancient Scripture, noting how the images captured by the James Webb Telescope evoke the same “mysterious joy” as we contemplate their sublime beauty. Finally, the Pope offered a reminder that no one achieves this work alone: all are part of a larger community of scientists, engineers, families, and friends who make these discoveries possible.
We now offer the English translation of the Pope’s address:
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Good morning, and welcome!
I am pleased to have this opportunity to greet all of you, students and scholars from various part of the world who are taking part in the Vatican Observatory Summer School. I offer you my prayerful good wishes that this experience of living and studying together will not only be academically and personally enriching, but also help to develop friendships and forms of collaboration that can only contribute to the progress of science in the service of our one human family.
This year’s Summer School – I am told – is devoted to the theme, Exploring the Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope. Surely, this must be an exciting time to be an astronomer! Thanks to that truly remarkable instrument, for the first time we are able to peer deeply into the atmosphere of exoplanets where life may be developing and study the nebulae where planetary systems themselves are forming. With Webb, we can even trace the ancient light of distant galaxies, which speaks of the very beginning of our universe.
The authors of sacred Scripture, writing so many centuries ago, did not have the benefit of this privilege. Yet their poetic and religious imagination pondered what the moment of creation must have been like, when “the stars shone in their watches and rejoiced; and their Creator called them and they said, ‘Here we are!’, shining with gladness for him who made them” (Baruch 3:34). In our own day, do not the James Webb images also fill us with wonder, and indeed a mysterious joy, as we contemplate their sublime beauty?
The Space Telescope science team has worked hard to make these images available to the general public, for which all of us can be grateful. In a special way, though, all of you who are taking part in the Summer School have been given the knowledge and training that can enable you to use this amazing instrument in order to expand our knowledge of the cosmos of which we are a tiny but meaningful part.
Of course, none of you have come to this point all by yourself. Each of you is part of a much greater community. Think of all the people over the last thirty years who worked to build the Space Telescope and its instruments, and those who worked to develop the scientific ideas that it was designed to test.Along with the contribution of your fellow scientists, engineers and mathematicians, it was also with the support of your families and so many of your friends that you have been able to appreciate and take part in this wonderful enterprise, which has enabled us to see the world around us in a new way.
Never forget, then, that what you are doing is meant to benefit all of us. Be generous in sharing what you learn and what you experience, as best you can and however you can. Do not hesitate to share the joy and the amazement born of your contemplation of the “seeds” that, in the words of Saint Augustine, God has sown in the harmony of the universe (cf. De Genesis ad Litteram, V, 23, 44-45). The more joy you share, the more joy you create, and in this way, through your pursuit of knowledge, each of you can contribute to building a more peaceful and just world.
With these thoughts, my friends, I renew my thanks for your visit and I assure you of my prayers for you, your families and your work and upon all of you, I willingly invoke God’s blessings of wisdom and understanding, of joy and peace. God bless you!
Thank you.
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