The Ptolemaic system was based on sophisticated math which actually worked. You could use it to make accurate calendars, predict the movement of celestial bodies across the night sky, foretell high tides and low tides and eclipses with precision, etc. It actually predicted better than the heliocentric hypothesis until a century later when some of the kinks were banged out of Galileo’s system.
And that whole business of the “missing” stellar parallax wasn’t worked out until, IIRC, the early 20th century.
Not to minimize Galileo’s -— and especially Copernicus’s—— achievement. Just adding a little more perspective.
The take-home lessons: science is not determined by “consensus” and is never “settled”.
And the Pope’s opinion on this is as good as my opinion on, oh, nanotechnology. These are not areas where we can pose as authorities.h
Even if the Pope had ten degrees in physics and other sciences, if he said anything about his scientific opinions in an encyclical, he would be abusing his office.