Pope: Science Can’t Explain Creation

Pope Benedict said scientific advances have narrowed the way life’s origins are understood; it still is lacking, however, in its explanation of creation, reported Reuters.

Benedict, whose remarks were published April 11 in Germany in the book Schoepfung und Evolution (Creation and Evolution), said, “Science has opened up large dimensions of reason ... and thus brought us new insights.”

“But in the joy at the extent of its discoveries, it tends to take away from us dimensions of reason that we still need,” he said. “Its results lead to questions that go beyond its methodological canon and cannot be answered within it. … This ... inevitably leads to a question that goes beyond science ... where did this rationality come from?” he asked. Answering his own question, he said it came from the “creative reason” of God.

Holy Father Appealed to Iran to Free Britons

According to a Reuters report, Pope Benedict sent a written appeal to Iran’s top Muslim authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking the release of 15 British military personnel.

The Vatican confirmed the existence of the letter, reported by the Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian said the Pope, just hours before the group’s April 4 release, had asked Khamenei to “do what he could to ensure that the British sailors and marines were reunited with their families in time for Easter.”

“It would,” the Pope said, “be a significant religious gesture of good will from the Iranian people.”

St. John Chrysostom Relic Given to Church

The Vatican has given a reliquary of St. John Chrysostom to Orthodox Theological Seminary in Khabarovsk, Interfax news agency reported.

Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao presented the reliquary in a ceremony in the local Transfiguration Cathedral. A spokesman for Archbishop Mark of Khabarovsk and Priamurye, who is also the rector of the Khabarovsk Theological Seminary, said, “Giving St. John Chrysostom’s relics to the Russian Far East’s only seminary is especially significant, as it happened on the eve of the seminary chapel dedication and also because the Church celebrates the 1600th anniversary of the saint’s canonization.”