It would appear that the Vatican is again having second thoughts ( twenty-second?) about their treatment of Galileo Galilei and their attitude to science in general!
At a news conference presenting a new volume of documents on the Galileo case, Monsignor Sergio Pagano head of the Vatican’s secret archives, said today’s Church and Vatican officials can learn from past mistakes and shed their diffidence toward science.
“Can this teach us something today? I certainly think so,” he said, in a rare display of self-criticism for the Vatican.
“We should be careful, when we read the Sacred Scriptures and have to deal with scientific questions, to not make the same mistake now that was made then,” he said.
“I am thinking of stem cells, I am thinking of eugenics, I am thinking of scientific research in these fields. Sometimes I have the impression that they are condemned with the same preconceptions that were used back then for the Copernican theory,” he said.
The documentation to Galileo’s trials can be viewed here.
Wait, did he just included eugenics in his examples of current scientific research?
Shall we be generous and assume that the Signor who is not a native English speaker meant genetics?!😉
If he didn’t he’s going to get into a lot of flak for that one.