On Saturday, 21 May afternoon the astronauts aboard the Space Station took a short break for a unique event: a teleconference with His Holiness Benedict XVI.
This was the first papal call to the Space Station. ESA astronauts Roberto Vittori and Paolo Nespoli and their colleagues talked for about 20 minutes with His Holiness, who was in the Foconi Room of the Vatican Library with ESA’s Director for Human Spaceflight and Operations, Thomas Reiter, Enrico Saggese, president of the Italian Space Agency, and Giuseppe Bernardis, General of the Italian Air Force. His Holiness talked with the crews in English and also addressed ESA’s two Italian astronauts in Italian.