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In another effort to improve relations between the Roman Catholic Church
and science, Pope John Paul II last week acknowledged the work of the 16th-century
astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus as ‘one of the greatest scientific achievements
of all time’.

The Church’s about turn came in a letter to a meeting at the University
of Ferrara, where Copernicus had studied, commemorating the 450th anniversary
of his hypothesis that the Earth orbits the Sun. Although Copernicus was
not censured by the Church in his lifetime for this heretical idea, he was
‘rejected by Catholic and Protestant theologians’, said the Pope. His book
was banned by the Church in 1854.

The Pope said Copernicus ‘showed the courage of the scientist in proposing
better explanations’, although he could not prove his theory, and published
it as a hypothesis. Galileo, the subject of papal reconciliation last year
(This Week, 7 November 1992), fell foul of the Church by proposing heliocentrism
‘as certainty’, noted the Pope.

‘The claimed incompatibility between science and faith belongs to the
past,’ declared the Pope.

He said Copernicus, a fellow Pole, was not just a great scientist but
also a great Catholic, who donated his medical services to the poor. His
example, said the Pope, showed that great science is based on a ‘spiritual
force’ able to inspire service ‘to our brothers’.