The year 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of Man’s landing on the Moon. It was on July 21, 1969, when Commander Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface where the Eagle, the lunar module of the Apollo XI mission, had landed six hours earlier. He was then followed by Buzz Aldrin while Michael Collins stayed behind controlling the Columbia, the command module. Three days later, the three triumphantly returned to Earth. What they didn’t realize at the time was that they had extended religion beyond our planet, as, at least in theory, the satellite was to be incorporated into the U.S. Diocese of Orlando, Florida.
A diocese is the term used to designate Christian administrative units, especially Catholic ones, although not exclusively, overseen by a prelate, whether a bishop, archbishop, or another variant. The concept derives from the Latin dioecēsis, which in turn comes from the Byzantine Greek dioíkēsis, a term Romans applied to a territory governed by a central city.
The expansion of Christianity and its assimilation into the state led to bishops, who initially could personally manage the first Christian communities due to their small size, leaving these in the hands of parish priests to take on the leadership of larger entities. The chosen formula was dioceses, which grouped several parishes.
The involuntary protagonist of the peculiar episode mentioned earlier was Bishop William Donald Borders, whose last name couldn’t have been more appropriate, even if intentional. He was a native of Washington, Indiana, where he was born in 1913 into a large family under extreme conditions, as his parents’ house was isolated by a flood at the time, and the doctor had to arrive by boat.
He studied for the priesthood at the seminaries of Saint Meinrad and Notre Dame (the latter in New Orleans), being ordained in 1940. He served as an army chaplain during World War II, where he earned the Bronze Star for rescuing a wounded soldier in the Italian campaign, and actively fought to end racial segregation in Louisiana, as well as being named rector of St. Joseph’s Catholic School.
On May 2, 1968, he became the bishop of the Diocese of Orlando, placing under his jurisdiction sites like the famous Disney theme park, the Universal Studios, and Cape Canaveral. For that reason, shortly after the return of the Apollo XI mission, when he traveled to Rome on an ad limina apostolorum visit (which bishops make every five years to report on the state of their dioceses), he took the opportunity to jokingly tell Pope Paul VI that he was now the bishop of the Moon. Faced with the pontiff’s bewilderment, Borders explained that this condition was endorsed by the Codex Iuris Canonici (Code of Canon Law), the first proper normative corpus of the Church, which took twelve years to draft and was promulgated in 1917, during the time of Benedict XV.
The Codex was updated in 1983, but in 1969 it was still in force as it had been for fifty-two years before, and according to its dictate, any new territory discovered would be assigned to the diocese from which the expedition had departed. The Saturn V, the rocket of the Apollo XI mission, took off from Cape Canaveral—then renamed Cape Kennedy since 1964, although it would return to its original name a decade later—so it was clear: the Moon would fall under the jurisdiction of Bishop Borders, who would be in charge of the largest diocesan extension in history with fourteen and a half million square miles. That said, he had barely any souls to attend to spiritually, since the approximately half a million Catholics it has are concentrated in the 28,814 square kilometers of Orlando.
The cardinals of New York and Miami joined in the joke, demanding to be the lunar bishops themselves, with the former noting that he was the military vicar of the Cape Canaveral base and the latter saying that the Moon is always over Miami. By the way, continuing in that light-hearted tone, it could be said that Borders was later demoted, at least in terms of territory, since in 1974 he went on to head the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Maryland, the oldest in the U.S. but only 12,430 square kilometers. He died in 2010, mired in accusations—with two lawsuits included—of not acting against priests whom he allegedly knew had committed sexual abuse. The current bishop of the Moon is John Gerard Noonan, whose surname is also curious because it bears a certain phonetic similarity to “Moon”.
But this religious-space story still has an epilogue to add, and it’s a Spanish one—Andalusian, to be more specific. In the mid-1960s, seeing that the Apollo XI mission was being prepared, Felipe Sánchez Urbano, secretary of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Moon, from the town of Pozoblanco in Córdoba, sent letters to each of the three astronauts, enclosing a card of the image of the Virgin (which is a current copy because the original 18th-century one was destroyed during the Civil War). None replied, but, as one might imagine, the success of the mission led to thousands of congratulations being sent to NASA from all over the world. Three of them, one for each astronaut, were sent again to the U.S. embassy in Spain by Sánchez Urbano. Among other praises and once again accompanied by holy cards, they said verbatim:
Dear Sir: with great emotion, we have followed the Apollo XI operation, culminating in so many successes that we all men of goodwill share, and so we warmly congratulate you. With this in mind, and as the best gift we can offer you, we enclose a photograph of the Blessed Virgin of the Moon, Patroness of this city and titular of our brotherhood, asking you to accept this gift from us in commemoration of the great feat you have accomplished, being the first earthlings to set foot on the Moon. We have proposed to the ecclesiastical authority that our titular, the Blessed Virgin of the Moon, be named the Patroness of Astronauts. May God, Our Lord, bless you and your family.
Surely Robert C. Hill, the ambassador, found the letters endearing because he did not throw them away but forwarded them to NASA. Incredibly, on September 23, 1969, a letter with the space agency’s letterhead and a response signed by Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins arrived at the headquarters of the brotherhood and is still preserved:
Dear Mr. Secretary: thank you very much for your warm and thoughtful letter. We appreciate your efforts in our behalf and we wish you every success in your dedicated endeavor. We are indeed honored for your considerations.
The three astronauts visited Madrid that fall and were invited to Pozoblanco, although their tight schedule did not allow it. But the ambassador assured that one of them had taken the card of the Virgin of the Moon with them into space.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on August 29, 2019: Cómo el obispo de la diócesis de Orlando se convirtió en obispo de la Luna
SOURCES
Billy Ryan, The universal Church: an obscure rule puts this bishop in charge of the Moon
Rennae Bennet, Remembering the Bishop of the Moon
Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de Luna
Wikipedia, Apolo 11
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