Communications Office
Interviews
Pope Leo XIV has appointed Fr. Richard D’Souza SJ as Director of the Vatican Observatory. Fr. D’Souza, who has been a staff member at the Observatory since 2016, succeeds Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ whose mandate ends in September 2025.
Fr. D’Souza hails from the region of Goa in India. He entered the Society in 1996 and was ordained a priest in 2011. He has a doctorate in astronomy with a particular research focus on the phenomenon of galaxy merging and its effects on the properties of galaxies like the Milky Way.
In this interview, Fr. D’Souza shares his thoughts about his new role and the long tradition of Jesuit presence at the Vatican Observatory.1. The Vatican Observatory has a long and storied history and can be considered as one of the ways the Church demonstrates her support for “true and solid science” (cfr. Pope Leo XIII). How do you see this mission being lived out today?
The main way we can live out this mission is to accomplish the best scientific research possible. Through the scientific teams and projects we take part in, the research papers we publish, the scientific conferences we organize/attend, and the friendships we maintain with our scientific colleagues, we are witnessing the fact that the Church supports “true and solid science.” We have historically limited ourselves to astronomy, but today we are slowly branching out to other allied scientific disciplines, including theoretical physics and meteorology/climate science.
