I'm with the Vatican on this one:
BBC: Vatican recants with a statue of Galileo
Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.
The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Nicola Cabibbo, head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and a nuclear physicist, said: "The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith."
Pharyngula says it's too little, too late, too cheesy, and Civil Commotion describes it as chutzpah (whatever that means), but, to me, it sounds like a genuine attempt to draw a line under the whole Galileo business and acknowledge, straight cough, that they were wrong. If that is indeed the case, kudos to them (whatever that means too).
And, on his rare, conciliatory occasion with the Roman Catholic church, why don't I go the whole hog and disagree with
