Pope John Paul II Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Evolution === On 22 October 1996, in a speech to the [[Pontifical Academy of Sciences]] [[wikt:plenary session|plenary session]] at the Vatican, John Paul II said of [[evolution]] that "this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory." John Paul II's embrace of evolution was enthusiastically praised by American [[Paleontology|palaeontologist]] and evolutionary biologist [[Stephen Jay Gould]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/vaticanview.html|title=The Vatican's View of Evolution: Pope Paul II and Pope Pius|author=Doug Linder}}</ref> with whom he had an audience in 1984.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://people.com/archive/stephen-jay-gould-vol-25-no-22/ |first =Michelle|last = Green|title = Stephen Jay Gould: Driven By a Hunger to Learn and to Write|date= 1986|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110110195417/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20093775,00.html|archive-date= 10 January 2011}}</ref> Although generally accepting the theory of evolution, John Paul II made one major exception—the [[Soul (spirit)|human soul]], saying: "If the human body has its origin in living material which pre-exists it, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God."<ref name="Evolution" /><ref name="NCSE" /><ref name="Tagliabue" /> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page