Pope picks Mich. astronomer to lead Vatican Observatory

DETROIT — Just before Pope Francis departed the Vatican for his Cuba/U.S. trip, he picked a metro-Detroit bred astronomer, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, to lead the Catholic Church’s study of the heavens as director of the Vatican Observatory.

On Friday, when the appointment was announced, Francis lunched at the Vatican with Consolmagno, who graduated from University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Beverly Hills’ Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Elementary school.

“It’s a thrill and an honor,” Consolmagno, 63, said in an email to the Free Press. “It was especially moving to hear the words of support from Pope Francis.”

Consolmagno and the pope have a few things in common. Both are scientists. Francis trained as a chemist in his native Argentina. And both men are members of the Jesuit order of Catholic priests and brothers. Consolmagno becomes only the second American to lead the Vatican Observatory, which is located outside of Rome at the town of Castel Gandolfo, and operates a telescope complex at the University of Arizona.

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Last year, Consolmagno was the first clergyman to receive the Carl Sagan Medal for distinguished work by the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Science.  The medal is named after the famed late astronomer Carl Sagan, who created the the popular TV series Cosmos in the 1980s.

Consolmagno has specialized in studying meteorites and asteroids and the Vatican’s collection is one of the world’s largest. In the past, Consolmagno even loaned a few of the Vatican’s meteorites to the Cranbrook Institute of Science, where he often attended lectures and summer programs as a youngster.  He's scheduled to visit Cranbrook in November for a talk open to the public

Consolmagno is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served in the Peace Corps in Kenya. He’s lectured around the world on astronomy and is the author of several books, including Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? and Turn Left at Orion.

Consolmagno once camped for six weeks on Antarctic ice to look for meteorite remnants. It’s one of the easiest places to look for meteorites because they stand out on the white surface.

Consolmagno said Jesuits have been studying the stars in the service of popes dating back to the 1500s, charting the skies to help create an accurate calendar.  But the Vatican also censured astronomers and Pope John Paul II apologized in 1992 for the centuries-old condemnation and imprisonment of Galileo for arguing that the Earth orbits the sun.

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“All this weight of history reminds us that this Observatory was the idea of the Popes in the first place, not of us scientists,” wrote Consolmagno. "They wanted to show explicitly how much the church values and supports pure research. Now it’s up to us to do good astronomy, from studying the Big Bang to searching for planets around other stars.”

Consolmagno's astronomical explanations were featured on TV’s The Colbert Report.  He has lunched, at their request, with William Shatner of Star Trek fame and the co-producer of The Big Bang Theory, fellow Michigan native Bill Prady.

Consolmagno will supervise a staff that includes 11 other scientists who also are members of the Jesuit order of priests and brothers. There’s also a priest scientist and four lay staffers, as well as adjunct astronomers and scientists at other institutions.