President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation to Deliver Lecture on Religion and Modernity

WORCESTER, Mass. – Rev. George Coyne, S.J., president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, will give a lecture titled “Modern Cosmology and Life’s Meaning,” on Monday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, is part of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity, which explores the place of religious and spiritual life in a world that is sometimes at odds with faith, other times in search of it, and always at work reshaping it. It is free and open to the public.

Fr. Coyne was appointed president of the Vatican Observatory in 2006; he previously served as the director of the Observatory from 1978-2006. Appointed as director by Pope John Paul I, Fr. Coyne was a driving force in several new educational and research initiatives, including the Vatican Observatory Summer Schools and the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tuscon, Ariz.

Fr. Coyne became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1951. He received his B.A. in mathematics and his licentiate in philosophy at Fordham University, New York City, in 1958, and completed the licentiate in sacred theology at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Md. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1965. Additionally, he has received honorary doctorate degrees from Boston College, the Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland, Loyola University Chicago, Marquette University, St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, and the University of Padua, Italy. He also has an asteroid named after him.