The Vatican will be erecting a statue of Galileo Galilei inside the city's walls - 400 years after the scientist was tried for heresy.
The Times reports the Vatican hopes that by putting up the statue, it will "close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his legacy but between science and faith."
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.
Pontifical Academy of Sciences head and a nuclear physicist Nicola Cabibbo said the statue - paid for by private donations - was appropriate because Galileo had been one of the founders of the Lincei Academy, a forerunner of the papal body, in 1603.
He had not been tortured or burned at the stake, as many believed, though he was forced to recant by the Inquisition.
A series of celebrations will take place in the lead to next year's 400th anniversary of Galilieo's development of the telescope including a a Vatican conference on Galileo to be attended by 40 international scientists and a re-examination of his trial at an institute in Florence run by the Jesuits, who were among Galileo's fiercest opponents in the Inquisition.
In January Pope Benedict called off a visit to Sapienza University, in Rome after staff and students accused him of defending the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo.
They cited a speech he made at La Sapienza in 1990, while still a cardinal, in which he quoted a description of the trial of Galileo as fair. The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted.
The Vatican's repentance over its treatment of Galileo began in 1979, when John Paul II invited the Church to rethink the trial of Galileo.
SOURCE
Vatican recants with a statue of Galileo (The Times 04/03/08)