![\"At](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/goa-priest-on-mission-to-unveil-galactic-cannibalism-from-vatican-observatory.jpg\" "\\"<p>Fr")
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Fr Richard D\u2019Souza with Pope Leo XIV. D\u2019Souza has served as superior of the Jesuit community attached to Vatican Observatory since 2002<\/p>\n
PANAJI: Physicist, astronomer, scientist, Indiana Jones. Not quite the words to describe a priest, let alone a 46-year-old Jesuit from Mapusa. But that is exactly what Fr Richard D\u2019Souza is.At the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, an ancient castle that once hosted pontiffs, D\u2019Souza is piecing together the violent history of galactic cannibalism \u2014 the consumption of smaller galaxies by larger ones. \u201cMy work is basically to understand the histories of galaxies. I try to be a galactic archaeologist, so I put on this Indiana Jones cap and I try to see how galaxies grow to the massive size that they are,\u201d he said.His breakthrough came in 2018, published in Nature Astronomy, when he and Eric Bell proposed that the Andromeda galaxy\u2019s most significant merger \u2014 a violent collision that reshaped the Milky Way\u2019s nearest galactic neighbour \u2014 occurred approximately 2 billion years ago.D\u2019Souza\u2019s own trajectory was less violent. Born in Pune in 1978, raised partly in Kuwait and partly in Goa, he entered the Society of Jesus, the formal name of the Jesuits, at 18. A Catholic order known for its intellectual pursuits, the society recognised in him something worth nurturing.\u201cI used to go for camping trips while studying at St Britto\u2019s, in the countryside, far away from the city lights where you could see the night sky. This was perhaps my first interest in the heavens, and this was confirmed a lot during my novitiate in Desur, Belagavi, which was a remote place where I could see the night sky,\u201d said D\u2019Souza.For his Jesuit formators, D\u2019Souza\u2019s path was neither straight nor predictable. After completing his physics degree at St Xavier\u2019s College, Mumbai, he pursued a master\u2019s degree in Heidelberg, working at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Then came philosophy in Pune, as his Jesuit formation demanded, followed by theology. Then, a gravitational pull-back to physics through his doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich.\u201cI seriously started thinking of astronomy as a career when I started my master\u2019s in physics at Heidelberg, where I did some small research project on astronomy, and it was this that really attracted me. I fell in love with the subject,\u201d he said.Between philosophy and theology, he briefly veered towards social action in 2007 when he helped start St Paul\u2019s Community College in Belagavi for school dropouts. This oscillation between the cosmic and the communal, between the spiritual and the celestial, should be debilitating. Not for him.\u201cOur work at the observatory is basically doing scientific research with 80-90% of our time going in collecting and analysing data, and going for conferences. The remaining 10% of the time, we remind the Church that faith and science need to go together,\u201d said D\u2019Souza.Since 2022, D\u2019Souza has served as superior of the Jesuit community attached to the Vatican Observatory. He is now director of the observatory itself, one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world that dates back to 1774.Given that he straddles the two heavenly realms of theology and astronomy, he is often asked about extraterrestrial life. \u201cI was waiting for this question and my response is, thank God I am not an expert on that,\u201d he recently said at an event in Porvorim, blending humour with pragmatism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fr Richard D\u2019Souza with Pope Leo XIV. 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