Star-gazing priest takes a timeout

From observatory to Raleigh parish

The new priest at St. Raphael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church in North Raleigh is no ordinary clergyman. He's a scientist, an astronomer and a vocal proponent of evolution.

The Rev. George Coyne, who stepped down as director of the Vatican Observatory last month, will spend a sabbatical on the staff of St. Raphael. He will stay for a year before returning to the observatory in the Arizona desert, where he will continue to lead the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

Though few Americans know it, the Vatican has supported astronomical research for years. Since 1980, most of that work has taken place atop Mount Graham in Arizona, where the desert climate is ideal for looking into the skies.

While science and religion often clash -- the Catholic church sentenced 17th-century astronomer Galileo to house arrest for his discovery that the Earth revolves around the sun -- Coyne has been devoted to melding the two.

"To have a small group of priests doing science is important to show there's no conflict," said Coyne, 73, a Jesuit with a doctorate in mathematics from Georgetown University.

Vatican-supported astronomy dates to the 16th century, when the church noticed that the date for Easter was slipping each year, to the point where the celebration was becoming a winter festival. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII asked a group of Jesuit scientists to reform the Julian calendar. The result -- the Gregorian calendar, still used today -- so pleased the pope that astronomical research has continued since.

The Vatican's observatories were first in Rome, above the Roman Forum, and later at the pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. By the late 1970s, however, the lights from Rome made night observations virtually impossible.

"In order to survive, we had to move," said Coyne. "I proposed to the pope we move to Arizona."

The observatory now partners with the University of Arizona, which has the world's largest telescope, Coyne said.

As for Raleigh, Coyne said that when he retired as the observatory director, the Vatican offered him a year's sabbatical before returning as a researcher. A native of Baltimore, he asked his superiors for a posting closer to home. The Jesuit provincial leaders sent him to Raleigh.

"Being involved in scientific research and administration for 30 years, I just wanted to be a priest," Coyne said, adding, "They have a great need of priests."

Last year, Coyne made the news when he challenged an influential Viennese cardinal who spoke out against evolution. "For someone to deny the best of today's science on religious grounds is to live in that groundless fear," Coyne wrote in the British religious journal The Tablet.

Although Pope John Paul II declared in 1996 that evolution was "no longer a mere hypothesis," the seeming incompatibility between the biblical account of creation and evolution continues to roil the church. For the most part, Catholics do not read the Bible literally.

The new pope, Benedict XVI, has not issued any definitive statements of his views, but he suggested in a speech Tuesday that humanity was not "the chance result of evolution."

"It's a live-wire topic these days," said Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphia-based Vatican observer and blogger.

Coyne said he has never been questioned or punished for his support of evolution.

The way he sees it, evolution, an ongoing process, glorifies God because it shows God to be working with the universe in an act of continuous creation that grows more and more complex.

"The universe is not like a ready-made car or dishwasher," Coyne said. "It has a dynamism, a creativity. With God's help, it is making itself."