The ritual discovery of the Vatican Observatory in Arizona:
The people taking the tour–members of a local church group for which Corbally acts as the spiritual leader–listened transfixed as he explained the history of the Vatican Observatory. The church, he said, in the late 1500s ordered Jesuit scientists to reform the Julian calendar, which was too long and thus threw off the dates of religious holidays. With new astronomical data, the Gregorian calendar, still used today, was born.
"That’s why the church chose this science, not something like medicine, originally," Corbally said. "But the commitment to it over the years has endured because of a desire to create a bridge between good science and good religion."
The Vatican’s initial observatories were in Rome and then in the Italian countryside, but both were essentially rendered obsolete when the bright lights of Italy’s largest city made night observing virtually impossible. In 1993, the Vatican Observatory, in collaboration with the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, completed the telescope on Mt. Graham. (The arrangement gives the Vatican 75 percent ownership and responsibility for the telescope, and the university 25 percent.)
Corbally spoke to the tour group as an expert with a doctorate in astronomy. At other times he spoke as a committed clergyman, saying that the more he unravels the complexities of the universe, the more he sees the brilliance of its creator.
Read Previous Post
