It happened on MARCH 9

1934

The Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was born in Smolensk. On April 12, 1961, he was the first man in history to orbit around the Earth, travelling aboard the space shuttle Vostok 1 and landing safe and sound. Only eight years later another man, this time an American, stepped foot on the moon. Unfortunately, Gagarin did not have the chance to appreciate the event. He had died one year earlier, on March 27, 1968, in an airplane collision, the exact circumstances of which are unknown.

2021

John C. Polkinghorne dies in Cambridge. He was born in Weston-super-Mare, UK, on October 16, 1930. Winner of the Templeton Prize for Studies in Science and Religion in 2002. After devoting 25 years to the theoretical physics of elementary particles, working with Abdus Salam and Murray Gell-Mann, at the age of 52 he was ordained an Anglican priest, and began to work on the relationship between science, philosophy and theology. Author of more than 30 books, his interdisciplinary thinking has addressed issues such as God's action in nature, the relationship between science and providence, future physical scenarios and Christian eschatology.

INTERS.org

AI Ethics Two Years after ChatGPT

Introduction, by Jeffrey Pawlick 

Antiqua et Nova, Notes on the Relationships between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dicastery for Culture and Education (2025)

The AI Dilemma (video), Center for Humane Technology (2023)

The Asilomar AI Principles, Future of Life Institute (2017)

Managing the Risks of Generative AI, Harvard Business Review (2023)

The United Nations Resolution on AI, United Nations General Assembly (2024)

Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, UNESCO (2021)

 AI Thinks. But Do We?, by Riccardo Manzotti (2023)

 AI and the Vatican: What AI is and how it can be used, by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti (2025)

    

Peace, Science and development

  The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1954)

  The Erice Statement (1982)

  Addendum to the Erice Manifesto (2023)

  International Science Council Statement on the
  occasion of the United Nations International Day
  of Living Together in Peace (2024)

  Peace: a need inscribed in the heart of human,
  from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine
  of the Church (2004) 

Pope Francis, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science (2022)

    

Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science

The Encyclopedia, published by the Centro di Documentazione Interdisciplinare di Scienza e Fede operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, provides new, scholarly articles in the rapidly growing international field of Religion and Science (ISSN: 2037-2329). INTERS is a free online encyclopedia.

Anthology and Documents

To emphasize and spread relevant documents within the scientific community, this section provides key materials concerning the dialogue among science, philosophy and theology.

   

Special Issues

We offer here a selection of comments and documents on special issues in Religion and Science, collected for anniversaries and/or for the relevance of the topics.