Statue of Galileo Planned for Vatican

Reservoir Hill writes "Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the scientist by erecting a statue of him inside Vatican walls. The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated. He was held there while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The move coincides with a series of celebrations in the run-up to next year's 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope. 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. The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted and since the episode, several of the professors have retracted their protest."

Comments

Let's see a real apology!

[clickety6]

if they really want to apologise for the some of the more unconscionable actions of the Catholic church, then let them put up a statue of Julius Fromm !

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Fromm)

Re:They've got to be kidding

[pjabardo]

Well, that might not mean anything. What is the number of children in public schools in NYC compared to the number of children daily involved with priests? And do not forget another aspect that is very important: priests are able to pressure a kid with much more effectiveness than a teacher (something like: "if you tell anyone you will go to hell"). You could well be right (I could even say that you are probably right) but these simple numbers do not mean much without a definite and quantifiable context. That's the difficulty with statistics.

Mod Parent Up!

[Mikkeles]

It's informative. I have both dogs and chickens and have cleaned up the poop of both.