Via BoingBoing.

The Vatican never actually abandoned the practice of keeping pet scientists, a fact which I welcome with equal parts relief and shock, for they have been very quiet lo these last four centuries. I didn't think they'd ever recovered from the Galileo PR disaster.

But there are scientists at the Vatican, and one, Brother Consolmagno, is in fact an astronomer, and not only is he over that Galileo thing, he's also over that Copernicus thing, and he's right out there giving interviews to The Scotsman in which he says…

"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."

He also had a few pithy points to make about Papal PR as well.

Brother Consolmagno, who was due to give a speech at the Glasgow Science Centre last night, entitled "Why the Pope has an Astronomer", said the idea of papal infallibility had been a "PR disaster". What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept "somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority".

"It's not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear," he said.