Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli played translator during the roughly 20-minute call that was interrupted once when the line dropped at the orbiting laboratory.
Like a curious child, Francis peppered Nespoli and the five other crew members with questions both simple — What inspired them to be astronauts? — and philosophical — How do they view mankind’s place in the universe?
The responses he received, in particular from Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Sergey Ryazanskiy, marked another small step for the Vatican’s long tense relations with Orthodox Russia. Francis has made improving those ties a priority of his pontificate, and became the first pope in a millennium to meet with the Russian Orthodox patriarch last year.