CHURCH ADMITS IT WRONGED GALILEO.(Main)

Byline: ALAN COWELL New York Times

More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo for teaching that the Earth moved around the sun, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Inquisition's most infamous wrongs.

With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences today, Vatican officials said the Pope will formally close a 13-year investigation into the church's condemnation of Galileo in 1633.

The condemnation, which forced the astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries, led to Galileo's house arrest for eight years before his death in 1642 at the age of 77.

The dispute between the church and …