The head of the Vatican Observatory has welcomed the successful landing of a roving science laboratory on the planet Mars.
“I think everybody should be happy with the success of [the start of] this mission,” Jesuit Father José Gabriel Funes told Vatican Radio today. “We now have to wait for results, to see if we can learn more about Mars and the possibility of organic elements on the surface of Mars.”
NASA’s new science rover “Curiosity” landed on the Martian surface shortly after 1.30 a.m. EST, following a delicate and highly sophisticated landing operation. The $2.5 billion mobile laboratory will now begin a two-year mission examining the Red Planet, led by NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
One of Curiosity’s main objectives is to hunt for soil-based signatures of life, and send back data to prepare for a future human mission. “Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes,” NASA says. “In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's "habitability."”
Fr. Funes said the Church should have nothing to fear from any discoveries it might make, such as finding extra-terrestrial life forms, adding that the Church is deeply committed to scientific research. “That’s the reason why the [Holy See] has an observatory,” he said. “Whatever the truth might be, we are open to new results, once they are confirmed by the scientific community.”
In an interview with L’Osservatore Romano in 2008, Fr. Funes said life on Mars could not be ruled out and God could have created intelligent beings in outer space. He said that according to his “scientific judgment,” the existence of extraterrestrials is a “possibility”.
“Astronomers contend that the universe is made up of a hundred billion galaxies, each of which is composed of hundreds of billions of stars,” he explained. “Many of these, or almost all of them, could have planets. [So] how can you exclude that life has developed somewhere else?”
He also denied their existence of other intelligent life-forms would contradict Christian belief.
“As there exist many creatures on earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,” he said. “This doesn’t contradict our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God. To say it as St. Francis [of Assisi], if we consider some earthly creatures as ‘brother’ and ‘sister,’ why couldn’t we also talk of an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? He would also belong to creation.”
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory
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I’m happy to hear Fr. Funes remarks. The church has come a long way from the days of Galileo! I’m sure God is pleased to see man’s attempts to explore and understand His creation. It is not likely that we may discover something to disprove His existance! In fact, the more we understand, the more likely His existance becomes!
Gerard Mikula,
I don’t understand your statement about Galileo. What do you mean?
Well, im sure many out there know much more than I about jt. Perhaps someone will comment, but the church presecuted Galileo as a heretic for proposing that the sun was the center of the solar system. Before that, everyone believed that the earth was the center of the solar system, or the whole universe fir that matter.
The Chruch was fully ready to accept the Copernican model as a theory. At the time there wasn’t enough evidence to back up the claims. However, Galileo wouldn’t agree to it simply being accepted as a theory and attempted to prove it’s validity based on scripture. That’s when the Church stepped in and told him he needed to stop until he had actual proof for the theory. Galileo persisted and was put under house arrest for the rest of his life.
While probably appropriate to say the Church was not being entirely just in the matter, it’s incorrect to say the Church is some how anti-science because of what happened to Galileo.
If human life existed in other galaxies, wouldn’t Jesus have said something about that when He was here? Wouldn’t He have had to go to all these other planets and die on a cross every time? Let’s say these inhabitants did not sin and didn’t need the crucifixion. Since they were perfect, there would be more than One God, then? All of this is nonsense. To date, there has been no concrete evidence of anything living out there—-not even microbes. Microbes are the lowest members of the food chain. If they don’t exist there, the higher orders don’t exist either.
Thanks for the facts, andy. Obviously, ive had a misconception about Galileo’s interaction with the Church
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