“We mourn the death of Stephen Hawking. He was a scientist of remarkable insight who even more remarkably gave a human face to the work of astronomical cosmology”. Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, commented on Stephen Hawking’s passing in an interview with SIR news agency. The astrophysicist died at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of today, at the age of 76. “His fellow cosmologist, the late Fr Bill Stoeger of the Specola Vaticana (who died in 2014), studied with him at Cambridge and they remained good friends all their lives”, Br Consolmagno concluded.