It’s one of the most famous science vs. religion cases of all time: Galileo Galilei is tried by in the Inquisition in 1633 for daring to suggest that the Sun, not Earth, was the center of the universe. Enraged by this Copernican heresy, the Church places Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life. When Pope John Paul II spoke of the case in an Oct. 31, 1992, speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, sensational newspaper headlines declared that after 359 years, the Catholic Church had finally apologized to Galileo, or admitted Galileo was right, or pardoned Galileo.
The truth, of course, was a bit murkier and far more complicated. First, the case itself is not so simple: There were many contributing factors to Galileo’s trial, including politics, a personal dispute between former friends Pope Urban VIII and Galileo, and the Church’s beliefs (at the time) about how new ideas should be vetted and by whom scripture could be interpreted. When, in 1979, Pope John Paul II asked the Papal Commission to examine the Galileo affair, his focus was the implications of the case regarding how to better study and reflect on faith and science in dialogue with each other. There was no re-trial or pardon, and since the Church had continued to appraise the heliocentric model for the universe after Galileo’s trial and had acknowledged it for centuries, there was no “finally admitting Galileo was right.” The results were presented in 1992, and John Paul’s much-misinterpreted speech followed.
