Pope Francis: A Breath of Fresh Air

From the Writer’s Almanac:

It was on this day in 1633 that Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Inquisition, for supporting the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. In late April 1633, Galileo agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to an unlimited period of house arrest in his home in Florence. He gradually went blind and died in 1641. It wasn’t until 1992 that the Catholic Church formally admitted that Galileo’s views on the solar system are correct.

Had the church not retracted its position 23 years ago, it would have taken the current pope about 15 seconds to make that happen. Francis is a friend of science, honesty, reason, truth, and humanism. His presence in the world is one of the most progressive things that’s happened in the last 1600 years.