On Thursday, April 7, 2011, the American Academy in Rome hosted a public program on “Science and Faith” in its Conversations That Matter series. Academy director Christopher S. Celenza (1994 Fellow) discussed the interrelationship between scientific and religious inquiry with the bestselling author Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ, astronomer at the Vatican Observatory (Specola Vaticana).

This was the first event in a week-long celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Galileo’s demonstration and naming of the “telescope” on Rome’s Gianicolo Hill (April 14, 1611), on what is now the grounds of the American Academy.