The Vatican Invites World's Leading Scientists To Discuss Cosmology (independent.co.uk)

In 2014, Pope Francis declared that God is not "a magician with a magic wand" and that evolution and the Big Bang theory are real. Now, the Vatican has sent an invitation to the world's leading scientists and cosmologists to try and understand the Big Bang. The Independent reports: Astrophysicists and other experts will attend the Vatican Observatory to discuss black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion. The conference honoring Monsignor George Lemaitre is being held at the Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to help correct the notion that the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to science. In 1927, Lemaitre was the first to explain that the receding of distant galaxies was the result of the expansion of the universe, a result he obtained by solving equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Lemaitre's theory was known as the "primeval atom," but it is more commonly known today as the big-bang theory. The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, says Lemaitre's research proves that you can believe in God and the big-bang theory.

Comments

Re:When did the big bang happen though?

[PopeRatzo]

The originator of the Big Bang theory was in fact a Catholic priest, a Belgian I think,

Giordano Bruno was also a Catholic monk, who advanced the "infinite universe" theory, and got burned at the stake by the Vatican for his trouble.

I take your point, however. The Catholic Church has been pretty good on most science - up and down- but you've got to be careful, because if Science starts to suggest something that makes the Vatican too uncomfortable, they might get slapped down pretty hard. Though Benedict seems a decent sort in that regard. The pope before him would have gladly started burning witches and homosexuals again if he could. And the days of the Church controlling Western academia are long gone.