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02/11/2009: "Vatican says Darwin is right and Intelligent Design is nonsense"

The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin's theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. "In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God," said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a "higher power" for the complexities of life.

Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as "poor theology and poor science". Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a "cultural phenomenon", rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said.

[ There have been signs of progress and evolution within the Vatican recently. First the pope refused to condemn the "Holocaust denier" bishop and now there is this admission that Creationism is a mistaken idea. The Catholics are now more sensible in their worldview than the Creationist protestants, who are common in the US but far less so in Europe. ]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5705331.ece