Located just outside Tucson, AZ, high on the summit of Mount Graham, the Mount Graham International Observatory houses three research telescopes. The Vatican controls one of them. It is called VATT—the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope. But before I get too far into this blog, I want to make something perfectly clear. I don’t know what happens inside VATT. I have no access or other “inside information” that I can comment on. I can only go with what they themselves have put out publicly. And full disclosure, I can’t find anything I disagree with in their current website, their blogs, their commentary, etc. I find their science interesting and their philosophical discussions in-line with my own Christian beliefs. However … this was not always the case. Let’s go back a few years.
When I began researching The Lucifer Project a decade ago, the VATT telescope on Mount Graham quickly showed up on my radar screen. There were two main reasons: One, they named part of their own telescope Lucifer; Two, they were just about to put on a symposium titled, “Where You Baptized by an Alien?”. If neither of these catch your attention, let me give you some reasons why they should:
Let’s start with Lucifer. More commonly known as Satan or the devil, Lucifer was the angel God put in charge of planet Earth. He was our protector, and the Bible says he had a throne, which implies subjects and authority. According to scripture, Lucifer reigned for some unknown period of time before the sin of pride developed in his heart. He wanted to be worshipped like God. He ultimately convinced 1/3 of God’s angels to join him in a rebellion against Heaven. They eventually lost and Lucifer was banished back to Earth (his kingdom), now as Satan.
Now you personally may not believe in this history. That’s up to you. But let’s be clear about the Catholic Church. This is standard church orthodoxy, and it’s pretty much been so since the beginning nearly 2,000 years ago. So why would the Vatican name their own telescope after Satan? If you’ve read my The Lucifer Project series, you’ll recognize this pseudo-acronym straight out of book one: LUCIFER – Large binocular telescope near-infrared Utility with Camera and Integral Field unit for Extragalactic Research. I didn’t make this word salad up. It came directly from the Vatican Observatory’s website, and I almost laugh thinking about how hard they must have worked to make this acronym fit. But why go through the effort? Luckily, they actually answered that question years ago. You won’t find it anymore. But facility personnel at that time said something to the effect of, “Lucifer was with God when he made the stars and the galaxies. He saw it all. Our telescope will allow us to do the same. So the name is absolutely appropriate.” Obviously this isn’t a direct quote—and I can’t give you one anymore because it’s all been scrubbed—but does that answer sit well with you? I mean, all of the other angels were with God too, not just Lucifer. They could have picked the angel Gabriel, or the mighty Michael – Mirrored Infrared Camera with Helioscopic Advanced telescope for Extragalactic Light sensing or something sciencey like that. But no, they chose Lucifer aka Satan.
Now let’s move on to their symposium. I wish, wish, wish I had downloaded a copy of this event from their website all those years ago. But I assure you, I saw it with my own eyes. My wife did too. The Vatican Observatory at Mount Graham was giving a talk on the alien race that Jesus could have come from. Yup, you read that right. They were, at a minimum, theorizing that Jesus might have come from an alien race; and thus, we were baptized by an alien. Going even deeper, this belief paired well with the stated goal for their astronomy work at that time: to discover this race of aliens that Jesus came from. They called it The Lucifer Project. And, yes, that’s exactly were the title of my series came from.
So, we circle back to our original question. What is going on at the summit of Mount Graham? Of course, right now there appears to be nothing other than typical astronomy-type activities you’d expect. But clearly something very different was going on in early 2015 when I was doing my research. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the Vatican announced a new head of astronomy in September of that very same year. Was part of the transition a clearing up of these potentially harmful, but certainly distracting, issues?
Well, I have to admit, part of the controversy seems to end here. You see, unless someone is lying (that never happens, right?), Lucifer actually isn’t the name they gave their telescope. Lucifer is a part on one of the other telescopes up on Mount Graham … and it’s not operated by the Vatican. I know, bummer, right, it made for such a good story. But alas, it doesn’t sound like it’s meant to be. According to the Mount Graham International Observatory website, back in 2012 this other telescope renamed that part from LUCIFER to LUCI. I assume the reason was to stop all the crazed, conspiracy theorists who were undoubtedly annoying the heck out of them.
However, I still have two pretty big questions. The first one is this: I saw with my own eyes that Vatican commentary about why Lucifer was such an appropriate name. If it wasn’t your part (i.e. it was on a different telescope that you didn’t control), then why would you even talk about it? Here’s the second one: That symposium about being baptized by an alien was real. And that begs the question, does the Vatican Observatory still think Jesus came from an extraterrestrial race? I’m quite confident they’ll say no, and that this symposium never occurred. And, of course, that I was mad to suggest anything like this. But I know what my own eyes saw.