Aquinas Lecture: Vatican astrophysicist to speak on 'When Astronomy Meets Theology'

Intermountain Catholic

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SALT LAKE CITY — Father Paul Gabor, S.J., vice director of the Vatican Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., will share his experiences as an astronomer at this year’s Aquinas Lecture.

Fr. Gabor was born in 1969 in Košice, Slovakia. He considered a vocation in the priesthood in high school but said in a telephone interview with the Intermountain Catholic “it was not a particularly good time” so he enrolled in Charles University Prague, Czech Republic, where he studied particle physics, instrumentation in particular. He did further work in particle physics and completed an internship at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

In 1995, acknowledging the call of the priesthood, Fr. Gabor joined the Society of Jesus (popularly known as the Jesuits). He was ordained to the priesthood in 2004. After his noviate, he was sent to study philosophy in Cracow, where he met mathematical physicist Fr. Michael Heller, who suggested he consider joining the Vatican Observatory. In 2001, Fr. Gabor attended the four-week Vatican Observatory Summer School. Afterward, he enthusiastically shared his experience there with his provincial, who surprised him by suggesting that he “saw something in it to pursue,” Fr. Gabor said.

He went on to earn a PhD in astrophysics in 2009 in Paris. He then spent seven months in Australia in a tertianship (a repetition of the novitiate) before joining the observatory in Rome in September 2010. He transferred to Tucson’s Vatican Observatory in January 2011 to help with the instrumentation needs of the observatory.  

In September 2012, Fr. Gabor became vice director of the observatory.

Along with helping maintain the telescope and teaching astronomy at the University of Arizona, Fr. Gabor participates in two observational exoplanet projects. The first helps identify Earth-sized planets orbiting red dwarves within 50 light years of our planet (which he calls “in our neighborhood”), while the second analyzes data from solar-like stars using a spectroscope attached to the observatory’s telescope.

For the Aquinas Lecture, titled “Magnificent Universe: When Astronomy Meets Theology,” Fr. Gabor said he will share with his audience his attempts at bridging what he calls the “science and religious cultural divide.”

The Vatican Observatory is called to follow the admonition of Pope St. John XXIII to explain science to the Church and the Church to science, he said. Generally, they have been more successful in doing the latter than the former, the pope added.

 “It is an uphill battle, given the humanist culture that can sometimes exist in the Church,” where many priests have studied the humanities and philosophy rather than science, but it can be done, Fr. Gabor said.

Most astronomers are “more aware than the average person how magnificent the universe actually is,” Fr. Gabor said. Regardless of their faith tradition or lack thereof, they “tend to be fairly grateful to somebody – or Somebody – for the opportunity to study the universe.”

One of the most profound truths of astronomy is that the universe is knowable, he said.

“All these things we are allowed to know, against all the odds, are in parallel with the revelations of God in the history of his chosen people, and in Jesus Christ, our Lord. … It is rather strange that we who are really tiny can actually figure out the lifespans of stars and galaxies,” said Fr. Gabor who hopes to convey his own sense of awe to his audience.

The annual Aquinas Lecture, which is sponsored by the St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center is named after St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican theological scholar, and is intended to carry on his teaching of the Catholic faith.