Is Vatican's pro-Darwinism an apology for persecution of Galileo?

I -- and probably a lot of other people -- thought that the issue of the Vatican's persecution of Galileo was settled in 1992 when the church apologized for the persecution. Not so. A news article said,

In May, several Vatican officials will participate in an international conference to re-examine the Galileo affair, and top Vatican officials are now saying Galileo should be named the "patron" of the dialogue between faith and reason. . . .

The Church has for years been striving to shed its reputation for being hostile to science, in part by producing top-notch research out of its own telescope.

Yes -- and the Vatican's former chief astronomer, George Coyne, said that Intelligent Design "belittles god."

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

But that apparently wasn't enough. In January, Benedict canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza University after a group of professors, citing the Galileo episode and depicting Benedict as a religious figure opposed to science, argued that he shouldn't speak at a public university.

But the church already apologized for the persecution of Galileo. Did the pressure to cancel that speech have anything to do with the decision to not invite anti-evolution scientists to speak at a Vatican-sponsored conference on evolution?
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At a Vatican conference last month entitled "Science 400 Years after Galileo Galilei," the Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Galileo was an astronomer, but one who "lovingly cultivated his faith and his profound religious conviction."

"Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God," Bertone said.

The head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, which co-sponsored the conference, went further. Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi told Vatican Radio that Galileo "could become for some the ideal patron for a dialogue between science and faith."

The legacy of the Galileo affair could be the reason why the Vatican is bending over backwards to accept Darwinism. That is something to think about when the Darwinists brag about the Vatican's acceptance of Darwinism.
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