Perhaps.
That doesn't necessarily make it fair that he was put under house arrest.
Aside from religious authority, his ideas didn't catch on due to a very literal interpretation of the Bible.
ReligionS.
Happy? I added the "s".
He insulted the Pope, publicly. Even to this day, insulting a ruling monarch will get you
hanged in many countries around the world. Thailand, from memory, flogs people who insult the king. Now, you can easily claim that the Inquisition was too harsh
by modern standards in locking up Galileo for what basically amounted to sedition - and I'd agree with you - but at the time most secular rulers would have had him beheaded in a public square. He got off very easily compared to most who behaved as he did. Even in modern times, he'd be guilty of libel for his comments.
As for heliocentrism not catching on, that had nothing to do with it contradicting the Bible - it doesn't, even by a strict interpretation - and everything to do with the fact that Galileo's "proof" was actually incorrect, and demonstrably so. As LS stated, the Jesuits proved heliocentrism after Galileo's death, and the church immediately accepted it. Even many who believed in heliocentrism found Galileo's proof laughable. For one thing, it posits only one tide a day, when any idiot can see that there are two. And I'm sure there were other mistakes that people more knowledgable than I am could point out.
Religion as a term has lost most of its meaning these days. Theism is the more scholarly acceptable term now. Religion has become too diffused since the collapse of organised religion and the rise of personal, eclectic and syncretic belief systems on such a large-scale. I wouldn't be as against you using the term as LS is though, but then again, I'm not a philospher or a theologian. LS and Plotinus are. But if you want to teach "all religions" - by which I'm assuming you simply mean all the major global theological movements - in school, you'll have to extend it by about ten years. There are four major strands of Buddhism, let alone all the other religions out there.