Post date: May 21, 2011 4:3:0 PM
Pope Benedict mixes pastoral care with a fascination for scientific advances, as he converses with the astronauts on board the International Space Station.
VATICAN CITY (MAY 21, 2011) REUTERS - Pope Benedict chatted to astronauts in space via satellite video link on Saturday (May 21), asking them about life in space and the view of our planet from above, and becoming the first pope to make a call into space.
The video transmission between the Vatican and the International Space Station, streamed live on the Internet, was planned to honour the last flight of space shuttle Endeavour, which docked with the station on Wednesday (May 18).
Benedict addressed the 12 astronauts on the space station, including Russians, Americans and Italians.
The pontiff also sent his condolences to Paolo Nespoli, one of the two Italian astronauts on the ISS, who recently lost his mother while he was in space.
"Dear Paolo, I know your mother recently passed away, and when you will go back home you won't find her waiting for you. We all were next to you, I prayed for her too", the pope said to Nespoli. "Do you feel away from everything and isolated in the space station? Do you suffer a sense of deprivation, or do you feel part of a community?" asked the pope.
"Holy Father, I felt your prayers reaching me way up here", said Nespoli. "We are out of our world, but we are in orbit around the Earth and this gives us a vantage point to see and feel what is around us."
"It was the first time that a pope has called to a station in space and I think it really touched them, and it was fascinating for him to see weightlessness," said Thomas Reiter, head of the European Space Agency, told Reuters. "He asked if the view of our own planet is as fantastic as it has always been described. And of course they confirmed."
Previous popes have also encouraged space exploration. A message from Pope Paul VI was included in the goodwill messages left on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts after the first moon landing in 1969.
"Religion and science don't have to be
separate, it should be the same, you take it on faith", said Richard Forensworth, a friend of ISS astronaut Michael Finke, from the United States, while visiting the Vatican. "What the pope can tell them is 'look at the beautiful universe that the Lord made.' They can see it better than any of us can."
The astronauts are installing a particle detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer in the space station. The AMS will search cosmic rays for signs of dark matter, antimatter and other phenomena which cannot be detected by traditional telescopes. Scientists expect its data will reshape their understanding of the universe.