Pope accepts honorary degree, encourages faith-science dialogue

Published: 2004-11-24

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Accepting an honorary degree from Nicholas Copernicus University in his native Poland, Pope John Paul II encouraged further dialogue between faith and science. The pope thanked his Polish compatriots for the honor at a brief ceremony at the Vatican Nov. 23. In attendance were Polish church leaders, scholars and state authorities. When the pope visited the Torun university in 1999, he made a point of praising Copernicus, an astronomer and mathematician born in Torun in 1473. Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolved around the sun was condemned by the church in 1616, and his book expounding the theory, "De revolutionibus," was on the papal index of forbidden books until 1822. The church also condemned Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei for upholding Copernicus' findings. In 1992, Pope John Paul said the Vatican had erred when it condemned Galileo -- an act seen as a landmark in the modern church's effort to rebuild a dialogue with science. The pope said he was accepting the honorary degree "with gratitude, as a sign of dialogue between science and faith, in continual development." He said the goal of this dialogue was to overcome the historic counterposition between the truth known through reason and the truth known through faith. "Today we understand better that it involves the same truth," he said.

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