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Here's another gem from the British Pathé archives: a silent 1929 newsreel with amazing footage of the Vatican Observatory.
How beautifully symbolic to see the telescope pointing above the dome of St. Peter's. It reminds me of what I write in My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints about "holy people who, having experienced some of the greatest sorrows that the world could offer, were yet able to turn their eyes toward heaven and be saved." Among them was St. Josephine Bakhita, who, after being baptized, looked back and realized that her first encounter with her heavenly Father was when, as a child, she gazed in awe at the sky: "Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself: Who could be the Master of these beautiful things? And I felt a great desire to see him, to know Him and to pay Him homage ..."
Read more about the Vatican Observatory on its official website.
