Pope Francis lets a universe eavesdrop on his phone call with astronauts

Pope Francis took a tiny step toward softened Vatican-Russian family Thursday when he chatted with Russian cosmonauts and praised their bargain of adore during a write call with a International Space Station.

Italian wanderer Paolo Nespoli played translator during a roughly 20-minute call that was interrupted once when a line forsaken during a orbiting laboratory.

Like a extraordinary child, Francis peppered Nespoli and a 5 other organisation members with questions as elementary as what they favourite to do in space, what astounded them most, and what desirous them to turn astronauts.

Pope Francis takes long, prolonged stretch call from space2:16

The responses he received, in sold from Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Sergey Ryazanskiy, noted another tiny step for a Vatican’s prolonged moving family with Orthodox Russia. Francis has done improving those ties a priority of his pontificate, and became a initial pope in a millennium to accommodate with a Russian Orthodox primogenitor final year.

Grandfather’s inspiration

Ryazanskiy told Francis that he had been desirous by his grandfather, a Soviet operative who helped build Sputnik, a world’s initial synthetic satellite that noted a commencement of a Space Age.

“For me it is a good honour to continue what he was doing to do his dreams with a space flight, a destiny of all humanity,” he told a pope in English.

Francis, who has prolonged prominent a purpose of grandparents, marveled during his response. “That’s a strength: Never forget roots. It does me good to hear this! Thank you,” Francis said.

Francis also praised Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin: Francis had asked how a organisation members accepted Dante’s hymn that adore is a force that moves a universe.

Misurkin told him in Russian, translated by Nespoli, that he had been reading Antoine de St. Exupery’s “The Little Prince” while in space and was taken by a categorical character’s bargain of love.

“Love is a force that gives we strength to give your life for someone else,” he told a pope.

Francis illuminated adult during his response, observant “It’s transparent we have accepted a summary that St. Exupery so poetically explained, and that we Russians have in your blood, in your humanistic and eremite tradition.”

It was a second pope phone call to space: Pope Benedict XVI rang a space hire in 2011, and asked about a destiny of a world and a environmental risks it faced.

Francis’ papacy has been noted by his regard for a environment.

Space hire Cmdr. Randy Bresnik told Francis that what he many enjoyed in space was being means to “see God’s origination maybe a small bit from his perspective.”

“You see a thinness of a atmosphere, it creates we comprehend how frail a existence here is,” he added.

Bresnik, a U.S. Marine who flew fight missions during a Iraq war, told Francis that what struck him many was that from space there are “no borders, there is no conflict, it’s only peaceful.”

“People can't come adult here and see a wondrous beauty of a Earth and not be overwhelmed in their souls,” he told a pope.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/pope-francis-iss-1.4372768?cmp=rss