The Catholic Church first placed Copernicus's work on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1616. The Sacred Congregation of the Index issued its decree on March 5, declaring the claim that Earth moves and the Sun is stationary contrary to Scripture. Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was suspended until it could be corrected.
The action came more than 70 years after the book's publication in 1543. By then, Copernicus's Sun-centered model had attracted both supporters and critics, especially as astronomers debated whether heliocentrism was merely a useful mathematical hypothesis or a physical description of the universe.
The Church did not immediately destroy every copy or impose a permanent total ban. In 1620, approved corrections softened or removed passages presenting heliocentrism as certain, and qualified scholars could read corrected copies. The book remained on the Index until 1758, when Pope Benedict XIV removed it. Galileo's later conflict with Church authorities is often mistakenly treated as the date Copernicus's book was first censored.