Laws of gravity don't work in Italy either, Pope John XXI in 13th century had them declared null and void /heresy.
Smells like another internet-spread revisionist history rumor.
His Wikipedia article makes him sound like a scientist, himself:
"Wherever he studied, he concentrated on medicine, theology, logic, physics, metaphysics, and Aristotle's dialectic. He is traditionally and usually identified with the medical author Peter of Spain, an important figure in the development of logic and pharmacology."
"To secure the necessary quiet for his medical studies, he had an apartment added to the papal palace at Viterbo, to which he could retire when he wished to work undisturbed."
The Catholic Church, even in its early days, was/is loaded with scientists and scholars. The concept of the Church being anti-science is a more recent internet-fueled meme.
> Laws of gravity don't work in Italy either, Pope John XXI in 13th century had them declared null and void /heresy.
This is a distortion of a distortion (the original distortion popularized by Stephen Hawking was that John XXI declared laws of nature in general, not the law of gravity as such, to be heresy.)
The actual fact is that John XXI declared the teaching of a contemporary faction that the laws of nature constrained the power of God was heresy.
