Last week, Pope Benedict cancelled his visit to Rome's La Sapienza University, where he'd been invited to give the inaugural address.
In a previous speech at the university before he became Pope, he gave his support to the astronomer Galileo's conviction for heresy in 1633 - which, suffice to say, didn't go down well with the students or academics at La Sapienza. Caspar Melville takes up the story:
Seventeen years ago at Rome's La Sapienza University, when he was just plain old Cardinal Ratzinger head of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the modern version of the inquisition, the Pope made a speech which argued that Galileo's' conviction for heresy in 1633 had been just and reasonable given the context of the time.
Galileo, who argued that the earth revolved around the sun, has been a thorn in the side of Catholic orthodoxy for more than 350 years, and the various ways in which the church has responded to him offers a kind of index of the tricky relationship between holy mother church and science. We shouldn't forget that the scientific milieu in which Galileo worked was dominated by the church, he was devout, he worked in catholic institutions and debated with scientifically minded clergy.
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