CENTENARY OF GREAT CATHOLIC SCIENTIST

New Zealand Tablet, 19 June 1919, Page 13

CENTENARY OF GREAT CATHOLIC SCIENTIST

To those who love to accuse the Church of hostility to science and of a desire to ‘'put back the hands of the clock,” the Cardinal-Archbishop of Pisa, himself one of the foremost scientists in Europe, presented a striking picture at Reggio Emilia when this Padre Secchi’s native place celebrated the centenary of the great astronomer’s birth. Cardinals, bishops, prelates, and theologians of fame to the number of 300 were there ; laymen of every calling, proud of the lustre shed on their city, attended in multitudes, says Southern Cross. Before tracing the famous Jesuit’s scientific activity and referring to his stay at Stonyhurst, and afterwards at Georgetown University, America, on the occasion of the abandonment of Rome by the Company of Jesus at the outbreak of the revolution in 1848, Cardinal Maffi recalled the day, over half a century ago, when, in presence of Cardinals and jdie elite of the world of science in Rome, Padre Secchi passed two hours in a hall of the Collegio Romano recounting his most recent discoveries' in the heavens. This episode was not new in the traditions of Rome. On the same spot in 1611 Padre Maicot, in presence of a learned audience — among whom sat Galileo— described the first stellar conquests made by the telescope. And many years before this, in 1533, Pope Clement VII. and the Roman Court listened to Widmanstad propounding his theory of the movement of the earth around the sun. - \ . Many of Cardinal Maffi’s hearers knew Padre Secchi to have been a prolific writer in his branch of science, but few had an adequate idea of his great activity in this respect until the number of his works Had been recounted by his Eminence. .