Did you know that John Paul II warned scientists not to study the "Big Bang" because it was "holy"?
It must be true because Steven Hawking uses that statement as a regular "laugh line" in his talks.
Har, har, har...Catholics and the Inquistion...that's a knee slapper every time.In another observation of modern religion, Hawking noted that in the 1980s, around the time he released a paper discussing the moment the universe was born, Pope John Paul II admonished the scientific establishment against studying the moment of creation, as it was holy.“I was glad not to be thrown into an inquisition,” Hawking joked.
The problem is that John Paul II never said it.
Here's one site that links to the putative speech, which contains nothing of the sort.
And - mirabile dictu! - here is an atheist who came up with the same conclusion.
And, then, there is the obvious problem that the person who formulated Big Bang cosmology, aka "the Father of the Big Bang" - Father Georges LeMaitre - was a Catholic priest.
Oh, and the Vatican has an observatory.
But we should expect this story to become iconic.
*sigh*