The Daily Beast reports that astronomers met at the Vatican for a conference in honour of Georges Lemaître. Lemaître, a Catholic priest and astronomer, proposed in 1927 the notion of a "primordial atom" from which the Universe originated. His idea is now commonly called the Big Bang theory. The article notes that the words "God" and "religion" are absent from the titles of the presentations.
Slides (PDF) associated with the presentations are available from the Web site of the Vatican Observatory.
further reading:
official announcement
biography of Lemaître
The Cornell Daily Sun article about Lemaître
additional coverage:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday May 19 2017, @05:15PM
> nor do I think religion is a helpful influence in modern science
I'll propose one lonely exception: Religion-driven cultural norms preventing scientists from slicing and stitching all kinds of living things together, just because now they can.