by Deborah Shapley
Rebecca Mead profiled Brother Guy Consolmagno S.J. known as the “Pope’s Astronomer” in the July 28/Aug 4 issue of The New Yorker. Her piece showed how the Detroit-raised Catholic became a planetary scientist (BA, MS from MIT; PhD from University of Arizona; and Harvard and MIT postdocs). Then, by paths of self-definition (Kenya and college teaching), he joined the Society of Jesus.
Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, Director of the Specola Vaticana, photographed for the New Yorker profile in the July 28/Aug 4, 2025 issue. Consolmagno has been Director Emeritus (title) from (date). (link)
Consolmagno is newsworthy because he has engaged scientists and the public for more than 30 years on behalf of the Vatican - the astronomical arm of the Catholic Church that dates to 1582. “Faith inspiring science” is the tagline of this outgoing and somewhat hip Michigander. To advance the mission “to show the world that the church supports science,” he gives lectures, hosts podcasts and is author or co-author of more than a dozen books.
But The New Yorker profile missed Brother Guy's connection to the Shapley family.
Consolmagno was born in 1952 in Detroit and raised in a Catholic family. He attended Jesuit schools there. Aiming to become a journalist, he enrolled at Boston College. But he transferred to MIT to study planets instead with its Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
The New Yorker passed quickly over his PhD training at the University of Arizona from 1975 to 1978. In those years, he was mentored in writing and publication by Mildred Shapley Matthews.
I first met Brother Guy in 2022 at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington. He came to headline a fundraiser for the Vatican Observatory Foundation. I thank Katie Steineke of the VOF for this introduction. Consolmagno was the President of the Foundation, which raises funds to operate its advanced telescopes on Mount Graham in Arizona.
Mildred Shapley Matthews in 1993 when awarded Harold Masursky Award by the American Astronomical Society for meritorious service to planetary science.
Consolmagno told me he met Mildred the very first morning of his arrival in Tucson. He knew she was the daughter of the great astronomer and his brilliant mathematician wife. He found Mildred to be a smart, humorous presence. (I can confirm this because she was my aunt!) He wrote me:
This "family portrait," a composite of the Jovian system, includes the edge of Jupiter’s with its Great Red Spot, and its four largest moon discovered by Galileo Galilei satellites. Shown from top to bottom are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Image: NASA/JPL/DLR
“I knew Mildred very well .… She was like a surrogate mom to me when I was a young graduate student at Arizona in the mid 1970s, along with also being the excellent editor of my first paper, a chapter in the Jupiter book for the Arizona Press Space Science Series.”
“I always thought the world of her.”
PhD in hand, Consolmagno pursued postdoctoral research at MIT and Harvard. But he came to feel he was writing papers that would be read by only five people “when there’s people starving in the world,” as he told The New Yorker. He entered the Peace Corps, went to Africa and then taught college in the United States.
He enrolled in Jesuit training in 1989. In books and lectures, he tells of his discovery of the importance of faith alongside science. One of the Specola Vaticana’s treasures is a huge world-class meteorite collection. Consolmagno’s expertise in this field was one reason Pope Francis I appointed him Director of the Specola in 1993.
Reception for Vatican Observatory Foundation at the Apostolic Nunciature in 2022, The 75 or so guests and other clerics heard Sister Raffaella Petrini interview Br. Guy. about the Very Advanced Technologiocal Telescope (VATT) which the VOF supports in Arizona, Right is Br. Guy and Deborah Shapley. HarlowShapley.org
What of Mildred? Mildred (b. 1915) worked at the University of Arizona. From 1970 to 1996 she was Scientific Editor of the Space Science Series which came to include more than 30 books. In 1993 she received the Harold Masursky Award by the American Astronomical Society for meritorious service to planetary science.
Mildred is the author of a memoir she wrote in the 1960s about growing up in the family of Harlow and Martha Betz Shapley and her four younger brothers. She interviewed her father and includes his accounts in the memoir.
Shapley’s Round Table: Memoirs of an Astronomer’s Daughter was brought out in 2021 by June Matthews and Thomas J. Bogdan. He also compiled and maintains the largest Bibliography of Harlow Shapley’s written works anywhere, a key part of the Harlow Shapley Project.
At the Nunciature reception in 2022 I presented a fresh copy of Mildred’s book to Consolmagno. A short time later, he wrote me:
“I just wanted you to know how much I am enjoying Mildred’s book. I can hear her voice in every page, and the stories she tells are so vivid and so wonderful.”
June Matthews, Mildred’s daughter and my cousin, who is MIT Professor of Physics Emeritus, and Thomas J. Bogdan, of Boulder, Colorado, continue to help and advise me on the Harlow Shapley Project. They find things and correct me. We have great dialogues. I am very grateful to them.
Mildred Shapley married Ralph Matthews in 1937. The four children are June (b. 1939), Bruce (b.1941), Melvin (b.1945), and Martha (b.1963).
* Shapley’s Round Table is available at amazon
I summarized parts of the book and filled in narrative and graphics in a post on this website, “Close-up: Life with the Director” (Feb. 2023 ).
Bibliography:
Turn Left at Orion (with Dan M. Davis, Cambridge University Press, 1989
Brother Astronomer, Adventures of a Vatican Scientist (McGraw Hill, 2000)[16][17]
Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic belief and the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life (Catholic Truth Society, 2005)
God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion (Jossey-Bass, 2007)[18
Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: ...and Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-box at the Vatican Observatory (with Paul Muller, Crown Publishing Group, 2014)
A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars: Exploring Wonder, Beauty and Science, Loyola Press, 2025)