The Church, via a Council of Infallible statement by the Pope never ruled Galileo a heretic. For the record, Galileo, as Copernicus remained in good standing with the Church there entire lives. As I stated, he used a telescope, which had been discovered since Copernicus’s death, to observe the natural world and thus provided some data to support the Copernican theory, which was published in 1543. Still, this theory was not provable for some 200 years later, and even the theory proposed by Galileo was somewhat off, even though in substance correct, as we now now that neither the sun (heliocentrism) or the earth (geocentrism) is the center of the universe as it has no center that can be detected.
Shortly after Galileo published his book “The Starry Messenger” in 1610, the Jesuit Father Christopher Clavius, who some consider the greatest mathematician of his age as he was the one who came up with the Gregorian calander, wrote to Galileo that his fellow Jesuits had observed the same things Galileo had and wanted him to come to Rome.
The leading Jesuits and many Cardinals supported Galileo and he was told he could teach the “copernican theory” as a valid hypothesis. Of couse, there was that declaration by some theologians in 1616 declaring Galileo’s views “false and absurd”, but theologians have not authority over sceince. They did not then and do not now, and there was no papal statement confirming these statements. Despite that declaration, Galileo went about his business, but he would still teach the “copernican system” as a proved truth, not a “hypothesis”, which he was allowed to do. He did this in a book called The Dialogue, where he called his opponents “Simplicius” and in his book he stated the “copernican theory” as fact. In the end, this is what got him in trouble.
Eventually, he was brought before the Roman Inquisition and on June 16, 1633, he was censured for “suspicion of heresy” and was told to not even teach the “copernican theory” at all any longer. So censured for “suspicion of heresy” is not condemned for heresy. In fact, one can argue that it was disobedience that he was censured for.
Warren Carroll in his work “The Cleaving of Christendom: A History of Christianity Vol 4” (p. 540) sums the issue up nicely when he states “The declaration of the Holy Office that the Copernican Theory was false was never personally stated, let along taught, by and Pope; in fact, Pope Urban VII specifically declared that it was not heretical and never would be, despite the fact that he did not think it would ever be confirmed as undoubted truth. He certainly never taught anything about it ex cathedra. Doctrinal infallibility of the Pope was preserved. On a number of occasions, in its long history the Church has condemned an innocent man, whehter by misjudgment of the evidence or duress of the Pope. The Catholic has not protection against this except the respect for justice by fallible men—and on his judgment of individuals, even the Pope is fallible. It is right to condemn the injustice to Galileo. It is wrong to say that it disproves the authority of the CHurch.”
So in the end, The Church has never made a statement about Scientific truth as that is not in the domain of Theological Truths (Salvific and moral Truths) for which Papal infalliblity is related to. In addition, look and see what some of the Protestant leaders of the era said about the COpernican theory. In fact, it was the attacks of the Protestants on Galileo and the Copernican theory that were first, not the Catholic Church.
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/05/galileo-myths-and-facts.html