Galileo is the favorite example of how religion generally, and the Catholic Church in particular, hates science. It's trotted out as proof whenever the subject is raised.
Have you ever asked yourself why other, equally impressive, examples of the Catholic Church's hostility to science aren't also used? Yeah, it's because there aren't others. The Church learned from the Galileo mistake. It wasn't Rome that denounce Darwin's theory of evolution. It was some Protestant churches that were scandalized by it. The first pope to speak about evolution was Pius XII, in 1950. He said that there wasn't enough evidence yet to accept it as a proven doctrine, but there was nothing in it that inherently contradicted Catholic doctrine. The Catholic Church has never favored strictly literal reading of the Bible, including Genesis, and this makes flexibility of mind on certain scientific issues and how they interact with faith rather easier.
