Vatican recants with a statue of Galileo
Richard Owen
in Rome
and Sarah Delaney
in Florence
March 2008
timesonline.co.uk
Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.
The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Nicola Cabibbo, head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and a nuclear physicist, said: “The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith.”
Professor Cabibbo said that the statue - paid for by private donations - was appropriate because Galileo had been one of the founders of the Lincei Academy, a forerunner of the papal body, in 1603. He had not been tortured or burned at the stake, as many believed, though he was forced to recant by the Inquisition.
The move coincides with a series of celebrations in Rome, Pisa, Florence and Padua in the run-up to next year's 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope. Events include a Vatican conference on Galileo to be attended by 40 international scientists and a re-examination of his trial at an institute in Florence run by the Jesuits, who were among Galileo's fiercest opponents in the Inquisition.
The celebrations begin today with the opening of an exhibition on Galileo's telescope entitled “The Instrument Which Changed the World” at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence. The museum, which is undergoing an 8 million (£6 million) renovation, contains many of Galileo's own scientific instruments.
Paolo Galluzzi, head of the Florence museum, said that “even if Galileo had been wrong, you cannot judge scientific errors in an ecclesisatical court”. Giorgio Ierano, a cultural historian, said: “The wrong done to Galileo is being put right on the territory of his historic enemies. Wherever Galileo is in the afterlife, he must be enjoying this moment.”
In January Pope Benedict XVI called off a visit to Sapienza University, Rome, after staff and students accused him of defending the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo. They cited a speech he made at La Sapienza in 1990, while still a cardinal, in which he quoted a description of the trial of Galileo as fair. The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted.
The Vatican's repentance over its treatment of Galileo began in 1979, when John Paul II invited the Church to rethink the trial of Galileo.
