The Vatican Observatory's staff astronomers are, with few exceptions, Jesuits, continuing a long association between the Society of Jesus and the physical sciences that runs back to the order's own tradition of training members in mathematics and natural philosophy alongside theology. This is not a ceremonial arrangement: the observatory's astronomers publish in mainstream peer reviewed astronomical literature and participate in the same professional community as any other working research astronomers, rather than operating as a separate religious commentary on secular science.
The institution's continued existence functions, deliberately, as an argument by example rather than a stated doctrine: that a religious order can sponsor and staff a working scientific institution without treating scientific findings as a threat to be managed. Vatican astronomers have contributed to mainstream research on meteorites, stellar evolution and other standard astronomical questions, work that is evaluated by the same scientific standards as any other observatory's output.
The observatory's relationship with the broader Holy See runs alongside, and is distinct from, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a separate body that advises the Vatican on scientific questions generally rather than conducting observational astronomy itself, though the two institutions' membership and interests overlap.