Vatican erects its largest telescope in the U.S. to monitor Galileo’s dream
The Catholic Church has almost always been at the forefront of astronomical research and its facilities in Arizona are among the most modern in the world.
Tucked away on a mountaintop in Arizona, about 155 miles (250 kilometers) northeast of Tucson, there’s a surprising piece of real estate owned by the Vatican. At nearly 10,000 feet above sea level - and almost 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) from Rome - you’ll find the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), part of the Mount Graham International Observatory.
Naturally, some questions come to mind: What does the Vatican want a telescope for? And why is it in Arizona?
The Church’s interest in stargazing dates back centuries. In the Middle Ages, monks studied the stars to help calculate the dates of religious holidays with precision. In 1578 Pope Gregory XIII had the ‘Tower of the Winds’ built in the Vatican so that the Jesuits could do the astronomical work necessary for the reform of the calendar.
In 1633, Galileo was famously tried for heresy for defending the idea that the Earth orbits the sun. Even earlier, in 1600, philosopher Giordano Bruno was executed for proposing that the universe was infinite and might contain life on other planets. On the flip side, the ‘Big Bang’ theory was proposed in 1931 by a Belgian Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre.
The first great Vatican telescope
The idea of building a modern telescope dates back to 1891, when Pope Leo XIII wanted one of the oldest astronomical observatories to be put into operation. The Church was aware of scientific advances and made an effort to show thar faith and science go hand in hand in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. The Vatican also hoped to spark dialogue between religious scholars and the broader scientific community.
The problem was that light pollution in the Eternal City soon made it impossible to clearly observe the stars. In 1935, Pope Pius XI ordered the Vatican Observatory to be relocated to the Papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, just outside the city.
In the 1980s, the Vatican and the University of Arizona reached an agreement to build an observatory on Mount Graham, one of the best places in the world to study the stars.
A telescope in Arizona
Construction began in 1989 and the facility started operating in 1993 after an investment of $4 million. They were embroiled in controversy from day one. The observatory was built on land considered sacred by the San Carlos Apache tribe, and environmentalists warned it could harm the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel by disrupting its habitat.
Today, a team of Jesuit astronomers, many of whom also teach at the University of Arizona, operate the observatory. Since 2024, the telescope has been fully automated and can be controlled remotely - even from the Vatican’s own research center in Castel Gandolfo.
Over its 134-year history, the Vatican Observatory has participated in major international research projects, studying everything from the expansion of the universe and star formation to the search for extraterrestrial life. It has also collaborated with space agencies on exploration missions.
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