Church pampered Galileo

last updated 8 January 2015

Vatican City

Contrary to popular perception, the Catholic Church did not persecute Galileo Galilei for saying the earth moves around the sun, the Vatican said this week. Archbishop Angelo Amato, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—formerly known as the Inquisition—said that a letter recently discovered in Vatican archives proves that the church treated the famous astronomer mildly. While it’s true that Galileo was asked to remain in Rome while he was on trial for heresy, he was lodged at the luxurious Villa Medici, as a guest of the Florentine ambassador, and not in a prison. The idea that Galileo was “tortured so that he would recant” was utterly false, Amato told the weekly La Famiglia Cristiana.