Review of verdict on Galileo

CARDINAL KOENIG, Archbishop of Vienna, said this week that the Church was fully prepared to reconsider its verdict on Galileo, the astronomer, who was twice tried as a heretic for following the Copernican doctrine that the earth revolved round the sun instead of the sun round the earth.
The Cardinal, speaking at the eighteenth congress of Nobel prizewinners at Lindau, South-West Germany, said the judgment on Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, had been "one of the deepest of all wounds between religion and science" and must now finally be healed.
By reviewing the trial, he said, the Church would show the world the "limits of the Church's claim to infallibility." Initiatives had already been taken to give the case a "clear and open solution." and Pope Paul was fully informed.
Galileo is said to have responded, when persecuted and sentenced for his belief, with the words: "Epur ,ri muove" ("Yet it does move"—meaning the earth).