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Friday, May 27 2011 13: 13

The mysteries of creation in the light of faith Featured

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One hundred years ago the Catholic scientist was born,
the servant of God Enrico Medi

One hundred years ago Enrico Medi was born, one of the protagonists of the very long live TV broadcast during which he told and commented on Neil Armstrong's moon landing. Later, recalling that memorable night, Medi wrote: «4.56 am, 21 July 1969 of the Christian era. The man's foot wavers then lowers... it rests on the lunar ground... here it leaves an imprint: the man's signature. Man is on the Moon" (E. Medi, "La Luna ci Guarda", Rome, 1970, p. 79).
The physicist and popularizer Franco Gàbici - taking inspiration from A. Gliozzo's volume, “Enrico Medi, scientist and believer” - comments on these words on the Disf.com website: «That of specifying belonging to the "Christian era" of the year of that extraordinary feat was certainly not a simple temporal annotation, but the demonstration of the Christian Weltanschauung of a man of science who, faced with an epochal event, intended to remember that that important success of human technology should not make us forget the hand of the Creator. Granted, he was still the man "who took a first step", but that step was allowed by the "laws of physics that God allowed him to use".

 

Within the shadow of Neil Armstrong and within that imprint left on the ground of our satellite, Professor Medi therefore felt the constant presence of God, whom he thanked for "having made me born in this era and for having allowed me to witness this undertaking ( ...) in which everyone received good..."".
Medi, born in Porto Recanati, after high school enrolled in the faculty of physics after having discarded philosophy. He commented on the choice thus: «the subject closest to reality, to the truth of things, is physics». And physics it was, but a motivated and certainly not very technical physics because, as he declared in a speech at the Gregorian University, «when back in 1928 I enrolled in the faculty of pure physics (...) I took it precisely for this: because I felt a vocation, in my misery, of the harmony of truth between Philosophy, Physics and Faith." He took over as president of the Institute of Geophysics and in 1955 he was assigned the chair of Geophysics at the University of Rome.
The earth, therefore, was mainly his field of work and he dedicated his best energies to the study of the earth and its mysteries. In particular he was interested in the Earth's magnetic field and in June 1948 he published an article in which he predicted the existence of what would later be called "Van Allen Belts".
The idea was received with considerable skepticism by the scientific community which was later to change its mind when in 1958 NASA admitted the existence of bands whose position was very similar to that of the "bands" he had intuited.
In 1966 he was appointed member of the Lay Council for the Vatican City State. The professor. Gàbici continues by recalling that on the first anniversary of his death, which occurred on 26 May 1974, the Jesuit general Father Pedro Arrupe sent these words to the Medi family: «Pedro Arrupe SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, blesses the Lord for having given us in prof. Medi is an example of an authentic Christian, in which faith identifies with life in all its manifestations and hope is synonymous with the certainty of eternal life cum Cristo in Deo.
He intercedes for all of us who knew, esteemed and loved him with the heart of a friend."
Concluding his article, Franco Gàbici underlines: «Enrico Medi, therefore, will forever remain for us the "link" between the Earth and the Sky and a shining example that indicates to men of good will the true path to follow for reach the full realization of ourselves."
The diocesan phase of the canonization process is underway in Senigallia, which was opened in 1996, for which the Catholic Church has assigned him the title of "Servant of God".

 

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