Total solar eclipse: Br. Consolmagno (Vatican Observatory), “God is forever full of surprises, study of sun’s corona pioneered by Jesuits”

“Observing a total solar eclipse is of great value to scientists studying the sun’s corona, a field where Jesuit Brother Angelo Secchi of the Roman College was a pioneer in the mid-1800s. But of course, all of us, scientists or not, are also enraptured by the beauty of the event”, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, told SIR news agency, commenting on the solar eclipse that, from Mexico to Canada, was watched by over 200 million people in the US alone and by billions others on TV or the internet. “The laws of physics are so reliable that we can predict the time and place of an eclipse to a fraction of a second. But we cannot predict how beautiful it will be, or how it will affect each person who observes it. That tells me so much about a Creator who is both reliable and yet forever full of surprise!”, Br. Consolmagno concluded.
Riccardo Benotti