And then I wrote… On occasion I’ve quoted various posts I had up at my long-departed LiveJournal site. This one, from December, 2008, features not only such a post but the English version of an article that eventually was published in Italian in L’Osservatore Romano At his weekly “Angelus” prayer and public address at noon on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI had a nice call out to us astronomers. I haven’t seen an official English translation yet, but here’s my translation of his comments. …This mystery of salvation has a cosmic dimension: Christ is the Sun which, with its light, “transfigures and illuminates the universe in waiting.” The setting of the feast of Christmas is tied to the winter solstice, when the days in the northern hemisphere begin to get longer. And incidentally, perhaps not everyone realizes that St. Peter’s Square is also a meridian: the great Obelisk throws its shadow along a line that runs across the pavement up to the … Continue reading →