"Padre of the Rains"

The priests at California's Santa Clara Mission took care to be quiet last week as they strolled their ancient corridors. Talking amid the palm and olive trees in the garden, their voices were guarded and low. For in one of the mission chambers a venerable, white-haired invalid, with wrinkled, bespectacled eyes and a broad, benignant face, lay on what seemed likely to be his death bed. He was Father Jerome Sixtus Ricard, "The Padre of the Rains," and it seemed that his 80 years could not much longer resist the attacks of an ailing heart.

Dear is the name of Jerome Sixtus Ricard to California Catholics, especially dear to his students in astronomy and meteorology in the University of Santa Clara. Famed is his name among U. S. astronomers. For he whom they were once inclined to describe as as a "mad priest" is now ranked with astronomy's important names.

He was born at Plaisians, Drome, France, where he spent his boyhood until he was ten. Then he traveled in Europe and Africa with his parents, studied at Turin, Italy, entered his novitiate at Monaco, France, where he became a member of the Society of Jesus. In 1878 he entered Woodstock College, Maryland, and shortly thereafter was called to teach at what was then Santa Clara College. Almost immediately he began to study the heavens; those aspects of the universe which many dismiss as "physical" he easily conceived to be other forms of "spiritual" evidence.

At first, in a tiny shack among the olives, he worked with a four-inch telescope which had belonged to the College since 1860. In 1895 they bought him a second-hand eight-inch telescope and, because there was not enough money for a scientific mounting, Father Ricard called upon his students to help him improvise a mount. Day by day for years the tall figure in the black gown scanned the sky. Chiefly he trained his poor instrument on the sun.

In 1907, more than a quarter-century after he had begun, he elucidated a sunspot theory, modestly crediting its discovery to the 17th Century heretic Galileo Galilei. Sunspots, Father Ricard declared, exert a definite influence on weather conditions, cause tidal waves, earthquakes, tornadoes, affect even the moods of animals. After observing sunspots, he forecast California's weather for long advance periods.*

Worldwide astronomers scoffed. But Father Ricard had compared 4,000 weather maps with 3,000 sunspot observations, was not to be abashed. Blandly he replied to those who called him an ecclesiastical eccentric, by calling such an eminent astronomer as Herbert Hall Turner of Oxford a "wild theorist." In 1914 he was engaged in patient controversy with Astronomer Albert Porta of Turin, Astronomer Edward Lucien Larkin of Lowe's Observatory, Astronomer William Wallace Campbell of the Lick Observatory (now president of the University of California).

Father Ricard's head whitened as his years grew many. In 1921 those who had faith in him helped him celebrate the golden jubilee of his entry into the priesthood. Fourteen California missions tolled their bells in his honor. The California Knights of Columbus raised $500,000 to build him a new observatory.

In 1925 Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, head of the astrophysical observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, announced that exhaustive tests of the Ricard theory had proved it correct. The late Willis Luther Moore, onetime chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, declared the sunspot theory entirely tenable. Reporters rushed to Santa Clara Mission. They found "The Padre of the Rains" smoking his briar pipe in the garden. "I am very happy," he said. "I shall welcome their aid in clearing up points by no means entirely solved. The work has just begun." Thereafter he was elected to august astronomical societies in the U. S., Belgium, Mexico, France. He publishes a monthly long range U. S. weather forecast.

Last January a long California drought was broken by heavy rains after the Ricard observatory had promised a rainless month. Greatly perturbed, Father Ricard held his assistants responsible. Friends could understand the anxiety of a sick, elderly man to vindicate the system which had been his life-labor, even though it meant exposing the faults of others.

Ever an enemy of bigotry, a champion of personal liberty, Father Ricard remarked of Prohibition: "If man has no natural rights, there is no natural duty and no natural law. In the absence of natural law there is no law whatever. All is brute force. Thus, by denying the rights of man, prohibition is Bolshevism, both in theory and in practice." A poet and a philosophic essayist, he often said: "There is happiness in the stars. You grow nearer the heavens when you study them. You become one of them. The earth seems farther away. Life becomes peaceful."

*Father Ricard's theory in operation: When a spot reaches a point three days from the sun's western rim, a storm appears on the Pacific Coast. Rain or snow are probable; some disturbance is inevitable. Spots travel around the sun in 27 days. The critical periods are three days before they reach the central meridian in back of the sun, three days before they reach the eastern rim, three days before they reach the central meridian in front. With winds traveling from west to east, due to the earth's rotation, Pacific Coast storms cross the U.S. in from five to seven days, reach Europe in three days more. Though often broken by local conditions, they invariably make the crossing. Sun spots affect the earth's climate most when directly opposite the earth on the sun's central meridian. Spots on the sun's northern hemisphere cause storms, areas of low barometer; those on the southern hemisphere cause areas of high barometer, fine weather.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.