Pope John Paul II himself has been a keen supporter of the modern Vatican Observatory, although he hasn't been able to use the big telescopes for several years because of his infirmities, Consolmagno said.
A year after he became pontiff in 1978, John Paul created a commission to review Galileo's condemnation. After the commission reported back, John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."
A year later the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope was dedicated on Mount Graham, 120km east of Tucson, Arizona. It has been used for observations ranging from galaxy structure to stellar evolution.
Consolmagno says the Vatican has come a long way since the Galileo debacle, establishing first-rate science departments at Catholic universities and constantly updating its observatory, which for many years was in Vatican City itself.
In the 1930s, it moved to Castel Gandolfo, in the Alban Hills about 25km southeast of the capital, because Rome's city lights were getting too bright. It was an ironic choice of venue, considering that the papal villa was built by Urban VIII, during whose papacy Galileo was tried.
But eventually Rome's lights encroached on Castel Gandolfo, too, hence the choice of Arizona for the new telescope.
Some of the 12 scientists attached to the observatory work there, while others remain at Castel Gandolfo, doing research on the meteorites or processing data from the Arizona telescope.
"The perspective of the church is clearly changed since those times," said James Head III, a professor of planetary geoscience at Brown University. "It's not at all incongruous to be exploring the wonders of the cosmos as part of an official Vatican scientific thing," he said.
The Vatican scientists are "up there with world-class science and exploration," he said.
Head says he was particularly struck by the human perspective John Paul gave to space exploration when he received scientists, including Head, a non-Catholic, who were presenting their findings from NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and its satellites.
The pope, Head recalled, spoke about "how further exploration really opens up beyond our simple views here to the wonders of the cosmos and what we don't know."
Indeed, Consolmagno says the hunger for the unknown that inspires astronomers is the same "transcendent yearning" for God that theologians speak about.
Today, Consolmagno says, the church's main challenge is not to convince scientists that there is nothing wrong with religion, but "to convince religious people that there's nothing wrong with science" -- a reference to the evolution debate in the US and elsewhere.
Such lofty issues were not on the minds of the Swiss Guards up on the viewing deck when they got a rare close-up look at Mars and its ice cap, as well as a magnified glimpse of the moon, pockmarks and all.
"I'll be able to tell my grandchildren I saw Mars," said one who declined, in keeping with Vatican rules, to give his name. "You could see the details. Molto bello."
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