Fr. Michal Heller is Awarded the Prestigious Templeton Prize

Pope Benedict XVI has congratulated Father Michal Heller, 72, a Polish priest-cosmologist, and sent his good wishes for the award of the Templeton Prize in recognition of his out standing contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. The award will be conferred in London on May 7, 2008. In a letter written by Archbishop Fernando Filoni, Substitute for the General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, Vatican, to Mgr Heller on behalf of the Holy Father underlined the importance of a fruitful encounter between faith and reason, the two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of the truth. The Pope promised to keep him in his prayers as he receives the award from Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, May 7th. Father Michal Heller, a Polish priest-cosmologist and a onetime associate of Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, the future pope, was named March 12 as the winner of the Templeton Prize. The prize, the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual, is worth 820,000 pounds sterling (US$1.65 million). The award is given for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities. Father Heller, a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, Poland, was honoured for 40-plus years of work developing "sharply focused and strikingly original concepts on the origin and cause of the universe," according to the announcement on the prize. The priest, who for much of his life worked under the strictures of communism, has written more than 30 books and nearly 400 papers on such topics as the unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Father Heller said he would use the prize money to create the Copernicus Centre to further research and education in science and theology as an academic discipline. The Templeton Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation's international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life's biggest questions, ranging from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. Created by global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the monetary value of the Prize is set always to exceed the Nobel Prizes.