The Big Bang was the brainchild of a Catholic priest

['James T. Keane', 'More James T. Keane', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] America Magazine 2025-09-16 00:00:00

The Big Bang, which today is held as the beginning of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator, but requires it. The Big Bang was the brainchild of a Catholic priest in 1927—and when Pope Pius XII seemed to endorse his theories…that priest told the pope to knock it off. Georges Lemaître was a Belgian priest but also a theoretical physicist and a mathematician. Father Lemaître was surprised when Pope Pius XII weighed in on the Big Bang in a 1951 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican (where Lemaître was present). If those waves are indeed the leftover radiation from the origin of the universe, it would go a long way toward bolstering the Big Bang hypothesis.