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.
A prison chaplain said he wanted to get the scroll back into the hands of people who would use it.
Relics of saint are venerated in London
LONDON (AP) — Worshippers gathered at Westminster Cathedral in London to venerate the relics of a 19th-century nun who became a Roman Catholic saint.
The relics of St. Therese of Lisieux arrived at the cathedral Monday evening after a stop at London's Wormwood Scrubs prison.
Her three-day stop here marks the high point of a monthlong tour of the relics of venues including cathedrals, convents and the Anglican York Minster.
Bones from the saint's thigh and foot are displayed behind a glass window in a gold-trimmed hardwood casket that weighs almost 300 pounds.
Therese was a French Carmelite nun and 24 when she died of tuberculosis in 1897, after a life of devotion recorded in an autobiography. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925.
Interim pastor replaces victim
MARYVILLE, Ill. — The southwestern Illinois church where a pastor was gunned down during a Sunday sermon in March now has an interim replacement.
Thomas Huffy will be the 1,500-member First Baptist Church of Maryville's pastor while the church searches for a permanent successor to the Rev. Fred Winters.
Huffy lately has been interim pastor at First Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Mo., and spent 13 years as an associate pastor at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in Liberty, Mo.
Associate pastors have managed the Maryville church since Winters was shot to death March 8, allegedly by 27-year-old Terry Sedlacek of Troy.
Sedlacek has no apparent connection to the church or to Winters.
A not guilty plea has been entered on Sedlacek's behalf.
Giant churches in California
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (L.A. Times) — The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, one of the most influential American pastors of the past half-century, first preached from the roof of an Orange County drive-in theater snack bar in 1955 and later launched his "Hour of Power" television ministry and built the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.
In 1965, Pastor Chuck Smith opened Calvary Chapel, a tiny nondenominational congregation in Costa Mesa that welcomed hippies and changed the way many American Christians worship by combining literalist Bible teaching with contemporary rock music and casual dress (Smith is fond of Hawaiian shirts).
The worship style helped Smith expand his single church into an empire of 1,500 independent congregations. He said several thousand people attend services each weekend at his sprawling Orange County home church, which has 25 pastors, a school and a radio ministry.
"I believe there is a great spiritual hunger," said Smith, 82, who still preaches weekly. "Jesus said, 'If any man thirsts, then come to me and drink.' "