Religion News in Brief

Galileo exhibit is going up at Vatican

VATICAN CITY — Rudimentary telescopes, celestial globes and original manuscripts by Galileo are going on view at the Vatican Museums as part of an exhibit marking the 400th anniversary of the astronomer's first celestial observations.

"Astrum 2009: Astronomy and Instruments" traces the history of astronomy through its tools, from a 3rd century A.D. globe of the zodiac to the increasingly complicated telescopes used in more recent times to gaze at the stars.

At a briefing to launch the exhibit Tuesday, Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's top culture official, declined to revisit the Church's 17th century condemnation of Galileo for his discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun.

Church teaching at the time placed the Earth at the center of the universe.

Rather, Ravasi said that, while it was necessary to have the courage to admit errors when they were made, "I continue to believe that it's necessary to look more to the future."

The church denounced Galileo's theory as dangerous to the faith. Tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later changed to house arrest.

The ruling helped fuel accusations that the church was hostile to science — a reputation the Vatican has been trying to shed ever since.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

The exhibit, and other Vatican initiatives to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy, is part of the Vatican's continuing rehabilitation effort.

The exhibit opens Friday and runs through Jan. 16.

Donated Torah scroll is returned

ST. LOUIS — A Torah scroll that was donated to a federal prison in Springfield 45 years ago has been returned to its St. Louis-area congregation.

The Congregation B'nai Amoona in the St. Louis suburb, Creve Coeur, loaned Judaism's holy object in 1964 to enable Jewish prisoners to read from it during Sabbath services.

Officials at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners returned the scroll after deciding there weren't enough Jewish prisoners to justify keeping it.