Southold — Who says religion and science don’t mix? Certainly not Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory. Addressing the audience at the Custer Institute’s 30th annual Astronomy Jamboree at Southold High School here on October 4, Brother Guy summed it up this way: “My religion tells me who made the universe; my science tells me how He did it.”
Brother Guy, who has worked as a Vatican scientist since 1993, said people are often “surprised that the Vatican has an observatory, much less that the Vatican would be interested in asteroids and meteorites,” his fields of specialty.
But along with the graphs and scientific data in his Power Point presentation, he included Psalm 19, which begins, “The heavens declare the Glory of God,” and explained that studying science is “a way of worshipping the Creator.”
“To me, going out with a telescope is having fun,” Brother Guy said. “To me, going out with a telescope is God’s way of playing with me, a way I enjoy His creation.”
Originally from Detroit, Brother Guy earned his master’s degree in earth and planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1978.
In 1983, he joined the U.S. Peace Corps, where he served for two years in Kenya teaching physics and astronomy. He returned to the U.S. in 1985 working as an assistant professor of physics at Lafayette College, in Easton, PA, where he taught until his entry into the Jesuit order in 1989. He took vows as a Jesuit brother in 1991 and was assigned to the Vatican Observatory in 1993.

The Vatican has had an observatory since the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582. The modern observatory dates to 1891. “Pope Leo XIII established it in order to show the world the Church is not afraid of science but actually embraces it,” Brother Guy said.
The current modern observatory was built in the 1930s at the pope’s summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, near Rome. In 1981, a second research facility, the Vatican Observatory Research Group, was established in Tucson, Ariz.
Part of Brother Guy’s work is to serve as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest collections in the world. In his keynote address, he discussed his studies of the density and porosity of these “rocks” which have fallen to the earth and their implications on the study of the origins of the solar system.
Many at the Jamboree, which was sponsored by The Custer Institute and Observatory in Southold, were not surprised to learn the Vatican had an astronomer as they were fans of Brother Guy and fellow speaker Dr. Dan Davis, a geophysics professor at Stony Brook University. The two men co-authored “Turn Left at Orion,” considered, ironically, the “bible” of amateur astronomers. First published in 1989, a fourth edition is in the works. Brother Guy has also written several other books including “Brother Astronomer” and most recently, “God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion” (2007, Jossey-Bass).