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Meet the pope’s astronomer, who says he’d baptize an alien if given the chance
Br. Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer specializing in asteroids and meteorites, co-authored Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? with Fr. Paul Mueller to argue that faith and reason are compatible and that God is reason, promoting mutual respect over confrontation with a nuanced baptism stance of “yes— but only if she asks,” while his life includes MIT study, joining the Jesuits, Peace Corps service in Kenya, curating the Vatican meteorite collection, receiving the Carl Sagan Medal, and leading the Vatican Observatory Foundation from Arizona to raise awareness of the Vatican’s astronomical work, believing space exploration can unite humanity, noting that roughly 1 percent of budgets go to astronomy in both the Vatican and the U.S., describing himself as introverted and dialogue-oriented with a fondness for sci‑fi (referencing Interstellar), and planning to continue researching asteroid Vesta while reassuring believers that scientific inquiry does not threaten faith.
