Pope Leo calls up and congratulates Buzz Aldrin on the 54th anniversary of the moon landing By Monica Showalter
Pope Leo XIV continues to be a pope of pleasant surprises. He actually tweeted this out, as if he were a bit excited about it:
“This evening, 56 years after the Apollo 11 moon landing, I spoke with the astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Together we shared the memory of a historic feat, a testimony to human ingenuity, and we reflected on the mystery and greatness of Creation.”
Who saw that coming?
We know the pope majored in math in college, probably because he liked it — but imagine that it extended to an admiration for space travel and celestial things from its practical side — who knew?
For the rest of it, it was a wonderful reminder of America’s greatest moment, one that has yet to be surpassed, the successful launch to the moon in less than a decade after John F. Kennedy called for it — done on slide-rule technology. They didn’t even have pocket calculators.
In making this call to Buzz, the pope was declaring that America is great, pointing it out to the rest of the world.
The other thing that made this beautiful is the memory of the early space days themselves — when, just prior to Aldrin’s Apollo 11 mission in July of 1069, three astronauts on the Apollo 8 announced their first orbit of the moon on Christmas eve in 1968, by reading from the Book of Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth …
A billion people around the world listened.
And in those days, science and religion were very comfortable with one another as both achieved great things.
Perhaps the pope’s call was a longing for that kind of unity.
It was just wonderful that he gave Buzz a call.
It was a wonderful gesture, a kindly reminder to the ailing, elderly Buzz that he is still loved, remembered, and admired, even by the American pope in Rome, who is normally preoccupied with popish matters.
But he wanted to make time to talk to Buzz, telling him how special he was. Imagine being Buzz and getting that phone call.
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