Environment

The Catholic Church “embraces and encourages a passion for scientific research as an expression of love for the truth and for knowledge about the world,” Pope Francis told members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

John Mundell considers it “an incredible honor” that he was recently chosen as the director of the worldwide effort to put Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home” into action.

In his message for the World Day of Prayer for Creation, the pope said the current climate crisis is a call for men and women, especially Christians, to “repent and modify our lifestyles and destructive systems.”

The Jesuits at the Vatican Observatory were wowed like most people by the beauty of the photos from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, but the director said they also are excited by the scientific information the telescope will reveal.