The moon has always fascinated people. Its regular disappearance and equally regular return to our skies, only enhance it’s charm. Pope Paul VI called it the “pale lamp of our nights and of our dreams”. How beautiful the exotic gardens of Castel Gondolfo must have looked to the sleepless pope. Even in midwinter, my paved and denuded urban back garden has an intriguing beauty by moonlight.

Apparently in 1969 Paul VI donated a bronze plaque which the Apollo II astronauts were to place on the moon’s surface. It read: “O Lord, our God how great your name throughout the earth”. It’s nice to think that God, having picked it up on a lunar walkabout, read it and smiled in the direction of our own beautiful globe.

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