For the Vatican, the James Webb telescope reveals the “extraordinary power” of God

Stunning images of galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang, transmitted by the James Webb Telescope, reveal God's "extraordinary power" and "His love of beauty", the Vatican Astronomical Observatory said Thursday.

“We are very excited about the new images coming from the Webb Telescope! These images are beautiful (...). It's a tantalizing glimpse of what we can learn about the universe in the future,” observatory director Guy Consolmagno said in a statement.

“The science behind this telescope is our attempt to use the intelligence God gave us to understand the logic of the universe. Because the universe wouldn't work if it wasn't logical,” he added.

But the universe, he also pointed out, “is not only logical, it is also beautiful”. "It is the work of God revealed to us, and in it we can see both His extraordinary power and His love of beauty."

Guy Consolmagno says he is particularly "delighted" to discover the first sign of water vapor in the atmosphere of an exo-planet:

“150 years after Father Angelo Secchi added a prism to the lens of his telescope on the roof of the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome, and made the first spectral measurements of the atmospheres of planets in our own solar system. »

The divine origin of the universe remains the invariable creed of the Catholic Church, but its scientific doctrine has clearly evolved in the last century. Thus in 1992, Pope John Paul II had definitively rehabilitated Galileo, condemned in 1633 by the Roman judges of the Inquisition for having supported the thesis of the Polish scientist Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543), according to which the Earth rotates on itself and around the sun.

The Editorial Board (with AFP)