Vatican Iii

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

About the Author

Acknowledgments

This work is dedicated to all those who have influenced my life…my parents Fred and Agnes, my sister Lucille, my wife Marlene, my children, my teachers, and the several thousand students I have taught during my forty years as a teacher.

Edward J. Hahnenberg

July 30, 2006

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Introduction

Dr. William Snowdon left the Mount Graham International Observatory (MGIO) in southeastern Arizona early in the morning. He had been invited to a secret conference in Hawaii in two days. Mt. Haleakala had the antiquated ATST (Advanced Technology Solar Telescope), and the site had become cluttered with more and more space-exploring facilities, including a brand-new massive reflective observatory built by the Air Force a decade earlier in 2039.

There had been news reports of the discovery of a silicon-based life form on Europa by the European Union States’ probe Odysseus. He wondered if the top-secret meeting would give more details than the news reports had given. He doubted it, however, because ATST, despite its fifty year existence, was still the largest solar telescope in the world. Haleakala was also the site of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) that had been used to track down killer asteroids. Perhaps STARRS had seen something immanently threatening.

Whatever the meeting would concern, he felt a sense of excitement at having been invited. As the director of the Vatican’s observatory at Mt. Graham, he had gained prominence in his field with his work in the polarimetry of cataclysmic variable stars, utilizing the decades-old, but upgraded, 1.83m VATT … an adequate, but small telescope, funded partially by the Vatican in conjunction with the state’s university.

He voice-commanded his vehicle’s radio to search for current news of Jupiter’s moon on WorldNet, the 7000 channel satellite radio network.

Born in Germany in 1985, Snowdon had earned his doctorate in astrophysics at UCLA in the mid-20’s and had extensive experience in the EUS’ blossoming space program. The EUS had developed a space program that took a different direction than that of the US. NASA had established the first permanent settlement of earth’s moon in Sector D-1, in the desert-like plain Oceanus Procellarum and had successfully landed humans on Mars and returned them recently. Instead, the EUS, with leadership provided by the French and German scientific community, had focused their attention on robotic exploration of Phobos and Deimos, moons of Mars. To the surprise of the world scientific community, Odysseus, the two billion euro project of the EUS had successfully landed on Europa and had electrified the world with news of the discovery of what preliminary data revealed as primitive life forms. Patterned after NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which earlier in the millennium had concluded a hugely successful 14-year mission with a deliberate plunge into Jupiter, Odysseus had subsisted on an electrical diet of less than three thousand watts.

Snowdon had moved permanently to the US with his family in 2034 in order to join America’s advanced space research program. Though officially not on NASA’s payroll, Snowdon had been commissioned to do subcontract work in astrophysical data synthesis for a planned nuclear-powered probe to Pluto.

As Snowdon drove the thirty or so miles to Thatcher, he listened for a couple of minutes to World Europe as more details of Odysseus’ discovery were forthcoming. Voice-commanding world news, he caught the end of a report on the growing oil-shortage crisis. New reports from Saudi Arabia projected its reserve supply at 50 billion barrels, and with oil prices at a record $168 a barrel world-wide, he was glad he had invested the $215,000 in the Brazilian Fuego, a hydrogen-electric hybrid vehicle that provided virtually no dependence on foreign oil. Crises of global panic had come and gone in the past ten years because of the severe depletion of petroleum reserves. Farmers in India, whose population was now approaching 1.9 billion, had gone back to primitive animal-drawn tillage instruments because of out-of-reach oil prices. China’s economy, driven by their oil-based industry, had slowed significantly, despite increased reliance on nuclear power. China had outlawed all small gasoline engines and the bicycle was making a huge comeback in the country of 1.7 billion. The former OPEC states had a limited life-span because oil simply was running out. They were pumping at full capacity, but experts predicted another five decades and all known OPEC oil reserves would be depleted.

Fortunately for the US’s 430 million citizens and the EUS’ half a billion, nuclear, coal, solar, and hydrogen power were able to keep apace with the ever-increasing demand for energy. The world’s 8.1 billion people and 234 countries were still divided into First World and Third World countries… the haves and the have-nots. The economic divide between the two was growing wider by the year. Africa’s countries were hardest hit, and even the cure of the HIV virus could not replace the hundreds of millions who had died from the disease in previous decades. Civil war continued unabated throughout central, western, and northeastern regions of the continent, with some estimates of lives lost due to war during the past seventy-five years at close to 600 million.

Thatcher was a pleasant town of 38,000 residents, having been originally settled in 1881 on the south bank of the Gila River and named for the Mormon Apostle Moses Thatcher. There were plans already in the works for their bicentennial celebration in two years. Snowdon’s wife Susan was on the committee.

Driving through Safford, he remembered his hikes through the Gila mountains. The Safford metropolitan area had grown to a population of almost 60 thousand, largely because of its climate. Rainfall totals were less than ten inches a year, with virtually no snowfall, and high temperatures in the winter months often topping out at 60o F. Despite its desert-like terrain, it was increasingly becoming a haven for retirees.

Snowdon passed St. Rose of Lima’s church, just north of US-70. He reflected on changes in his parish since he had moved to Thatcher. The shortage of priests in the US had left the parish without regular Sunday Masses. The Diocese of Tucson had installed one of four permanent deacons as parish administrator five years earlier. Sunday services were always packed, but only once a month did a priest from Tucson, some ninety miles away, celebrate Masses.

Two years prior, the African Pope, Augustine I, had called for a general church Council to be held in Rome in 2050. Continental synods of bishops had been requested by Augustine in order that in the intervening time, the world’s bishops would be able to bring topic-drafts to be addressed in the upcoming Council. There were several issues that Augustine wanted the bishops to address.

Elected seven years earlier, Augustine was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a year after Snowdon. The Congo was 50 % Catholic, and, despite civil strife and disease of the past decades, had become one of the more stable democracies on the continent. Its population had risen by 50 % during the century, with the 2040 census listing 76 million inhabitants.

Pope Augustine, the orphaned son of parents who worked in the rubber industry, had grown up as Phillippe Kabamba. The young man had been raised in a make-shift orphanage and prep school (a former convent of the Sisters of Carmel) in the village of Fataki, 80 km north of Bunia, from his entry at eight years of age until his secondary schooling was completed when he was sixteen. From there, the Catholic priest in charge of the orphanage, seeing a prospective vocation to the priesthood in the young man had secured finances for Phillippe’s advanced studies at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. While in Belgium, Kabamba had persuaded his patron to allow him to fund additional courses in science, particularly those in astronomy. It was there that he met and befriended the future Dr. David Styles, the international expert in the study of sun-spot behavior.

Kabamba was ordained a priest in 2012 in Belgium, then was sent to Rome for doctoral studies in theology, then appointed rector of the major seminary of Brazzaville in the Congo. In 2033 he was consecrated titular archbishop of Garba and coadjutor with the right of succession to Brazzaville. Three years later he became Brazzaville’s Archbishop and in 2037 was appointed cardinal by Pope Gregory XVII. Upon the latter’s death in 2042, Cardinal Kabamba was elected the 269th Pope of the Catholic church.

Dr. Snowdon reached his home on the north side of Thatcher. The water table had dropped dangerously low in the area, so there was a ban on use of water for such niceties as washing his dusty Fuego. He parked the vehicle outside, and, since it was late afternoon in mid-September, he found his wife Susan preparing dinner.

He greeted his wife with I have a meeting to attend in Hawaii the day after tomorrow.

What’s it about, dear, Susan asked, half looking up and half chopping salad greens.

I don’t know… It’s a secret meeting, and for some reason, I’ve been invited to the observatory at Haleakala.

That’s strange, his wife mused. You haven’t ever been invited to a secret meeting… I assume it has something to do with the discovery on Europa.

That, or the discovery of an asteroid…

Well, you had better book your flight now.

Snowdon went to the living room and addressed the large entertainment console… ID A68H42D13, Airline ticket to Honolulu - one way nine, seventeen, two zero seven nine, window noon to two pm, with return flight date unknown.

"Your departure scheduled for 13:30 hours, nine, seventeen, two zero forty nine, Tuscon International, Concourse 4, Gate A, Alexis American Airline. Confirm?" answered the voice-activated entertainment-communications console.

Confirm.

"Your account will be billed at departure. Thank you for flying Alexis. Good day."

Snowdon sat down in his recliner and touched the tiny screen on the arm of the chair with his index finger. Immediately a series of his favorite programs appeared on the six-foot screen. He identified sequence 5, and program Asia/Pacific 36 began to play in 3-D on the holographic screen. He watched for a quarter of an hour, and was about to doze off, when the call to dinner came from his wife.

Dr. Snowdon arrived at the Welcome Center at the Observation Station, Mt. Haleakala, around noon on September 18th. The conference was to begin at 14:00 hours. He snacked on some white Li Hing Mui, a plum confection from Melaysia, as he toured the facility. The top names from academia were beginning to arrive. Dr. Morton Doronzo from Chile, research giant Johannes Brigstein from Germany, extra solar planetary expert Martina Brushenko from Russia… and others were some of science’s best… all gathering in the same place. This had to be important. No one saying anything important, or giving any information… maybe no one knew…

At 13:45 hours, an automated announcement was heard in the six international languages, English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, German, and Japanese, giving directions to the scientists where to meet.

Snowdon filed into the conference hall. Tables with two-way monitors were set up for what Snowdon estimated would be about 200 participants.

As Snowdon sat down, the monitor screen requested Name and country in the six languages.

Snowdon, USA.

On the screen appeared information in English concerning the conference’s presenters.

Dr. Steven Sherratt, director of the USE Odysseus program was scheduled to give introductory remarks. However, the head of the USA Astronomy Society, Dr. David Styles, whose research in sunspot activity at the University of Michigan had won him the Nobel Prize in science three years before, was the main speaker. Snowdon had come to know him quite well and had corresponded often. Styles and his wife had spent a two-week skiing vacation with the Snowdons three years previously.

Dr. Sherratt began the meeting with the usual welcome and apologies for the short notice of the conference. He then updated everyone on the discovery Odysseus had made on Europa.

"We have confirmed the existence of Bacillus infernus on Europa."

An enthusiastic round of applause greeted the announcement. If true, it would be the second confirmation of a life form in the solar system other than those on earth and Mars. Most of the scientists were knowledgeable of the bacteria form. Called hyperthermophiles, these organisms could thrive in high pressure water at temperatures up to 242o F without sunlight or oxygen.

"As you know, earth, in its early formation, was a hellish place. Bacillus infernos was found in and around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Life on earth began at very high temperatures. Those of you here who have read Thomas Gold’s predictions in the early 1990’s that such life forms existed have seen his theory proved true."

"The forms