- Article
- 200 words
- Level: all audiences
This brief article from the November 5, 1921 issue of America – A Catholic Review of the Week discusses Fr. J. G, Hagen, S. J., of the Vatican Observatory being honored.
Click here for the original article, courtesy of Google Books.
Two Vatican Savants Honored
Attention is called in the Pilot to the recent celebration at Rome of the sixtieth anniversary of the entrance into the Society of Jesus of the famous Vatican Librarian, Father Franz Ehrle, “whose learning and zeal have been recognized by three Roman Pontiffs and who is well known throughout Italy for his studies and researches.” Father Ehrle entered the Jesuit novitiate at Gorheim in September, 1861. His connection with the Roman archives began in 1880 when he undertook a social investigation. In 1889 he published the first volume of his great work on the history of the Papal Library, a monument of careful research, and in 1891 he was made Prefect of the Vatican Library. He is the author of various important and voluminous works, two of them undertaken in collaboration with other noted scholars. Another Roman dispatch, to which wide attention was called, is the N. C. W. C. report of the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy bestowed by the University of Bonn upon the Jesuit Vatican astronomer, Father John George Hagen. The occasion on which this distinction was conferred on him was the completion of his stupendous work of cataloguing the variable stars. Father Hagen, S. J., is well known in America, having been stationed at Campion College and later at Georgetown, where he was director of the astronomical observatory. He is the author also of a notable work on the “Synopsis of Higher Mathematics,” in three volumes. His appointment as director of the Vatican Observatory followed upon the international reputation he had already acquired in his study of the variable stars.
