Pope Urban Viii Quotes & Sayings

Upon learning of Cardinal Richelieu's death, Pope Urban VIII is alleged to have said, If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not ... well, he had a successful life. — Henry Kissinger

Even though Pope Urban VIII reversed the pronouncements of his predecessors by declaring slavery unacceptable in the mid-seventeenth century, the vast majority of Protestant Christians in America considered slavery and white supremacy to be absolutely consistent with "biblical" Christianity. It would take American Protestants over a hundred years to make slavery history. Even then, they would find ways to cleverly camouflage the old Doctrine of Discovery and its white supremacist scaffolding under distinctly American terms like Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism, terms still celebrated in many sectors of US society today. Professor — Brian D. McLaren

Then, in 1632, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) published his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems), wherein he established the superiority of the Copernican model. For this, as well as for the disrespectful tone of the book toward Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644), Galileo was tried and convicted of heresy, forced to recant his championing of the heliocentric model, and spent the remainder of his life under house arrest. Nevertheless, — Stephen Penner