You've taken a brave and original position.
Just a quick and preliminary response:
I couldn't identify the Pope you mentioned. I am not aware of any European institutions which can properly be defined as universities before the year 1000 AD. I think the oldest ones were places like Padua and Oxford, but they were begun later. Occasionally you see the flourishing of learning in royal courts eg under Charlemagne and King Alfred, and the Popes and bishops were usually surrounded by clerics educated in the trivium and quadrivium.
The contacts between the Islamic Crescent and the Latin West were fairly limited during the early Middle Ages. During the period of Arab conquest, it was all war all the time, up to the invasion of the Frankish kingdom and its defence by Charles Martel in 732. There was a period when embassies were exchanged between the Carolingian Franks and the Abassids. Notably, Harun al Rashid sent Charlemagne an elephant and a clock. This led to further exchanges of goods and coinage. Presumably there was also always a connection at the margins.
I think the discussion of astronomy you mention is more likely to have occurred within the Islamic Crescent. This era of internal multi-cultural exchange occurred before al Ghazali, from c.800-1100 AD, particularly in places like Baghdad. As mentioned, his injunctions led to the termination of those conversations.
The acceleration of contacts between Islam and the West occurred during and after the Crusades - from the twelth century onwards - as well as via Sicily and Spain, which were both recaptured from Moslem caliphs around this time. You see Greek literature and science appear again in the West (eg Ptolemy and Aristotle), as well as the appearance of Arabic mathematics and astronomy. As Neil Tyson likes to point out, the planets and constellations are named for the ancient Greeks, but the visible stars are mostly named for the Arabs. These discoveries are like tree rings in the astronomical record.
If you are interested in a really good book about contact between the West and Islam in the Middle Ages, I recommend RW Southern's Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages.
I agree that the church was the repository of knowledge and education in the Latin West during the Middle Ages. But only the knowledge which conformed with its views. Whole libraries of classical work were deliberately destroyed (eg the library in Alexandria) by Christian bishops and popes. There's a reason that classical works needed to be reimported from Islam. They had been thoroughly and completely dstroyed in Western Europe in the late Roman and early Medieval periods.
The words Copernican Revolution are traditionally used to describe the switch from the Ptolemaic model to Copernicus' heliocentric system. Revolution is a pun on the name of his book. You can look it up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution
Galileo is not the only scientist who was silenced. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy and his belief that the stars are distant suns within a giant universe.
Here's the text of the inquisition's condemnation of Galileo.
"Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vaincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine; for holding correspondence with certain mathematicians of Germany [Kepler] concerning the same; for having printed certain letters, entitled "On the Sunspots," wherein you developed the same doctrine as true; and for replying to the objections from the Holy Scriptures, which from time to time were urged against it, by glossing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning: and whereas there was thereupon produced the copy of a document in the form of a letter, purporting to be written by you to one formerly your disciple, and in this divers propositions are set forth, following the position of Copernicus, which are contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture:
This Holy Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Holy Faith, by command of His Holiness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the Sun and the motion of the Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:
The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.
The proposition that the Earth is not the center of the world and immovable but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith."
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html
Galileo, of course, was not a diplomat. But he was condemned by the inquisition quite specifically for holding a heliocentric view.
The church, as I wrote earlier, used science to confirm church orthodoxy. It wouldn't tolerate a contradiction of the Biblical text. Galileo couldn't even get the cardinals to look through his telescope.
But he was a man of his times and held views we now know to be false as well. Kepler, and not Galileo, had the tides figured. It was also Kepler who discovered the elliptical shape of planetary orbits and it seems I erred in my memory that Galileo agreed with Kepler on this point.
On the other hand, the Catholic church was responsible for believing in the perfection of circular orbits and tried to save its theories using elaborate systems of epicycles in order to try to have them conform with observational data. Kepler, on the other hand, had access to the observations of Tycho de Brahe, which were the best available, and discovered that planetary orbits are elliptical.
As we see, at this point the Catholic Church still controlled the conversation. It could incarcerate folks who disagreed with its model. Its model suited its politics neatly. Galileo represented a challenge to this control. Ultimately, scientists were able to push this clerical rule aside - and develop a secular, scientific model of reality.
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