I don't get your gist. Well funded how? He had patrons, and was treated very well, given the terms of his condemnation. I think this reflected the respect that he was accorded by all, rather than any power or influence he wielded.
And more polite than what? Than to say that he suffered at the hands of the Church? If he felt that way, he certainly wasn't free to say so! He had been forced after all, on pain of torture and death, to declare that he abjured and detested what he knew to be true, and had been proud of knowing and discovering.
But I think it's fairly certain that he attributed all of this to misfortune and the turn of events, and never abandoned his loyalty to the Church. I think the sorrow that he felt was for his Church and his Country as much as for himself.
With all due respect to the great man, whom I do admire, he suggested in his book that the Pope was a "dumb-ass", to which the Pope responded by calling Galileo a "heretic." The Enlightenment took care of the rest of the hero-suffering-for-science hagiography.
“I think the sorrow that he felt was for his Church and his Country as much as for himself. “
Sounds a lot like the ending of 1984 ... some people love Big Brother right to the bitter end.