Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 31 October 1992

The pope spoke at the close of a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He recalled that in 1979 he had asked theologians, scientists and historians to study the case afresh and that a commission was formed on 3 July 1981, whose work Cardinal Paul Poupard had just presented.

In section 5 he says that the new science obliged theologians to examine their own rules for interpreting Scripture, that most of them did not manage to do so, and that Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself more perceptive on this point than his theological opponents. In section 9 he says that the majority of theologians did not perceive the distinction between Scripture and its interpretation, which led them to carry over into the doctrine of the faith a question that belonged to scientific inquiry. He adds that the sentence of 1633 was not irreformable and that the debate was closed in 1820, and in section 10 he speaks of a tragic mutual incomprehension. The address is the judgment of a later pope on the events and is cited as such in the Trial of Galileo.