Interfaith Group

For the next 10 years, Consolmagno continued to play in the scientific big leagues, doing a doctorate in Arizona before returning to the east coast, to Harvard and MIT, where he was employed as a research post-doc. By the time he reached 30, he decided astronomy wasn't enough - "I couldn't see the point of studying the stars when so many people were dying elsewhere in the world of hunger." So he joined the Peace Corps.

"I was all ready to go wherever they sent me and to do whatever they wanted," he says. "So I was initially mortified to be sent to the University of Nairobi to teach astronomy. But my experiences taught me that poor people have as much interest in the stars as those of us living in the west, and this reconciled me to the idea that astronomy belongs to us all."

He returned to the US and continued teaching and writing until he hit another milestone. "At 40, I was happy but not content," he says. "I had a good job, but I was lurching from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next without ever believing I was going to find the person with whom I wanted to settle down and have kids. And then it just seemed right for me to become a Jesuit. It wasn't a decision I took lightly, but it was one that everyone who was close to me supported. Even my ex-sweethearts rather insultingly told me they always knew I'd end up a priest."

It's a journey that is not yet complete- he will take his final vows in September -but he has had no doubts along the way. And he has also got to do some exciting science. "Some projects have gone wrong and fizzled out," he admits, "but I've also had the opportunity to do things that no one else had ever bothered with.