E pur si muove! (And yet it moves)

Rico says that, when he woke up to the ladyfriend's radio this morning, NPR was talking about the Vatican observatory. At first he thought they were joking, or talking about L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, but no, there really is a Vatican observatory:

The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world. It has its headquarters at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, Italy. Its dependent research center, the Vatican Observatory Research Group, is hosted by Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
The Vatican Observatory Research Group operates the 1.8m Alice P. Lennon Telescope with its Thomas J. Bannan Astrophysics Facility, known together as the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT). This is located at the Mount Graham International Observatory (MGIO) in southeastern Arizona.

Why is the Vatican interested in astronomy? Initially it was for a practical reason, to reform the Julian Calendar, like so many national observatories that were started to improve navigation at sea; later at the establishment of the present form of the Vatican Observatory in 1891, for an apologetic purpose, in the sense of defending the Catholic Church's positive regard for science; now to join in doing good science in a way that is possible, given the Vatican's other concerns, as part of the consequence that the Incarnation of Christ applies to all human activity.

Rico says it's their translation; you'd think they could've done better. No mention, of course, of Galileo, who got into serious trouble for looking at the stars nearly three hundred years earlier...