I’ve always been fascinated by science, especially astronomy, so when I encountered Psalm 19 in my morning prayer recently, it struck home:

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. Psalm 19:1-4 (Vg. 18)

Our ancestors got a hint of the glory of God by looking up at the cosmos with nothing but their naked eyes, but these days we have sophisticated satellites and telescopes.  Did you know that even the Vatican has its own observatory and astronomers?   Yup.  In fact, the first Vatican observatory was founded around 1774!   The current Vatican Observatory is headquartered at at the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, although its research center, the Vatican Observatory Research Group, is hosted  by the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson Arizona.

Here’s a short clip of Pope Francis visiting the Vatican Observatory in July of 2013: