More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo for heresy, Pope John Paul II officially rectified one of the Church’s most infamous wrongs – the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun. With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 31, 1992, Vatican officials said the Pope formally closed a 13-year investigation into the Church’s condemnation of Galileo in 1633.