Is the Vatican Observatory training missionaries for Mars? Is it part of a conspiracy to hide evidence of UFOs? Or is it the Pope’s way of saying sorry for the persecution of Galileo? No way, says Guy Consolmagno, a former NASA astronomer who now works there. It’s a regular scientific establishment, funded out of the Vatican’s vast wealth and therefore, paradoxically, free to do genuine research. But then Consolmagno is also a Jesuit whose new book is a mission to set the record straight. Hazel Muir asked him whether despite the Pontiff’s attempts to apologise for the Church’s many…
Heaven's observer
By Hazel Muir
25 March 2000
