Pompeii – Throughout the Catholic world, Blessed Bartolo Longo (1841-1926) is known for his works of charity, devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary and charity for orphans and the children of prisoners.
Few people know, however, that lawyer Bartolo Longo was a very committed meteorologist. Despite his liberal arts education as a lawyer, he repeatedly attempted to establish a Meteorological Observatory in the Pompeii Valley, believing that faith, charity, and science could work together as expressions of the Creator's power.
According to Bartolo Longo, the transition from the world of approximation to that of science—that is, from a qualitative to a quantitative interpretation of atmospheric phenomena—can only occur through specific instruments capable of unambiguously interpreting the phenomena of Heaven and Earth and connecting the Transcendent with the Immanent.
Bartolo Longo meteorologist
At the time of Bartolo Longo, it was believed that meteorology encompassed most of the Earth's dynamics and that endogenous phenomena, such as earthquakes and eruptions, were related to exogenous phenomena such as rain or wind. It is no coincidence that the current Vesuvius Observatory, founded in 1841, was called the Vesuvian Meteorological Observatory.
Lawyer Bartolo Longo was keen to establish a meteorological observatory in the then Pompeii Valley, also prompted by extreme weather events such as the numerous lightning strikes that struck the Sanctuary in 1886-1887, which forced him to increase the collection of offerings for the construction of the main altar and the repair of the roof.
Bartolo Longo had an extraordinary interest in natural phenomena and their measurement, believing that this could be helpful in understanding them. In 1890, Bartolo Longo established the Meteorological Observatory in what was then the Pompeii Valley and asked Father Francesco Denza, a Barnabite, director of the Moncalieri Meteorological Observatory and a renowned climatologist, to include it in the national network of meteorological stations.
Under Denza's guidance, the observatory began issuing bulletins on local weather conditions. The instruments used to record various natural phenomena were those typical of a first-class observatory: the Fortin barometer (atmospheric pressure), the thermograph (air temperature), the psychrometer (air humidity), the evaporimeter (atmospheric evaporation), the nephoscope (cloud cover), the anemograph (wind), the seismograph (earthquakes), and the ozonometer (ozone).
All the instruments were supplied by the Cravero company of Turin, known for the great reliability of their instruments, for a sum of 1500 lire that the lawyer Bartolo Longo paid on October 23, 1889. The observations carried out by the Pompei Valley Observatory during total lunar eclipses that occurred on May 12 and November 4, 1892, were fundamental. After just four years, due to Denza's death in 1894, the Observatory was deactivated.
But Bartolo Longo did not give up and, in May 1907, he asked Father Guido Alfani, director of the Ximenian Observatory in Florence, to establish a new observatory which was named after the new Pope Pius X. But Father Alfani was busy full-time directing the Ximenian Observatory in Florence and immediately after the inauguration, he asked to be replaced.
Bartolo Longo entrusted the direction of the Pio X Observatory to the Neapolitan priest Gianbattista Alfano, a near-namesake of the Florentine Father Alfani, and recognized as a great expert on instrumentation and natural phenomena. Father Alfano published numerous interesting works on the genesis of the breeze in the Pompeii Valley and on the Norge's voyage to the Pole.
With the death of Bartolo Longo in 1926, the Observatory began to function irregularly, and with the Second World War, its activities were drastically reduced due to the lack of resources and difficulties in international communications. A few years after the end of the war, the Observatory attempted to resume regular activities, but the absence of Father Alfano, forced to retire for health reasons, led to its progressive decline, until its final closure in the 70s.
But Bartolo Longo's determination to establish a meteorological observatory under the guidance first of the Neapolitan Denza, then of the Florentine Alfani, and finally of the Neapolitan Alfano has not been forgotten, and today, Friday 11 July, the day of Saint Benedict, patron saint of Europe, the Meteorological Observatory was finally re-established on the same sites chosen by Bartolo Longo, who will be proclaimed a Saint on 19 October this year.
With the approval of Tommaso Caputo, Archbishop of Pompeii, and with the essential support of Don Salvatore Sorrentino, theologian and mathematician, I am pleased to announce that, together with my trusted collaborators (Mario Toti, Alberto Fortelli, and Raffaele di Cristo), we have restarted the San Bartolo Longo Meteorological Observatory on the terrace of the Bartolo Longo Pontifical Building.
We have installed a first-class “DAVIS” weather station equipped with all the most important meteorological sensors: temperature (°C) and air humidity (%), atmospheric pressure (hPa), rainfall (mm), solar radiation (watts/m2), UV (scale 0 – 11), wind intensity (m/s) and direction (relative to the North).
One of the first advantages of reopening the Meteorological Observatory in Pompeii is the possibility of comparing recent temperature data with those recorded in the Pompeii Valley, then a hamlet of Scafati and with a very small population and number of buildings, and published by Denza more than 130 years ago. This comparison will allow us to identify the so-called urban heat island effect that inevitably influences the microclimate of the present-day Pompeii, which now has more than 25 inhabitants and a high number of buildings and vehicular traffic.
The article about Bartolo Longo and his meteorological work is interesting, but there are some errors that make it difficult to read. The section on the history of the observatory is particularly fascinating, but it should be written more clearly.