Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and of the Governorate of Vatican City State, is currently in Tucson.

He’ll be there until Saturday, visiting the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Arizona.

The group, which is the Vatican’s independent research center, is hosted permanently by Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The research group operates the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in southeastern Arizona.

Cardinal Lajolo’s visit coincides with the International Year of Astronomy that was officially launched Jan. 15 at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The trip to Arizona is being billed as a sign of the “special interest that the Holy See has in this only scientific research institute of its kind,” according to Jesuit Father Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory.

After visiting the offices of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, which was founded in 1981, Cardinal Lajolo will attend the annual meeting of the Vatican Observatory Foundation in the presence of its Jesuit astronomers. He will also meet the foundation’s administrators and benefactors.

Cardinal Lajolo will also meet technical staff of the Steward Observatory and the project manager who constructed the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, which began operation on Mount Graham in 1993. The revolutionary high-tech telescope allows astronomers to develop programs for long-term research that could not be achieved at the Vatican Observatory’s other base at the Pope’s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest in the world — its origins date back to the reform of the calendar carried out by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Since 1935, the observatory has been based at the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo.

While meeting with the Vatican Observatory Foundation, Cardinal Lajolo might hear about how Jesuit astronomers at the Observatory in conjunction with NASA recently discovered planets that very possibly have twin stars, as in the movie Star Wars. This research has been led by Jesuit astronomer Father Christopher Corbally.

Father Funes discusses Father Corbally’s discovery in an interview published in the March 1-7 issue our newspaper, available here to Register subscribers. He also speaks at length about the International Year, the possibility of life on other planets, and the theory there are multiple universes in addition to our own.

At the conclusion of his U.S. visit on Monday, Cardinal Lajolo will visit the apostolic nunciature in Washington to attend a reception held in his honor by the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi.

— Edward Pentin