Vatican: Faithful should listen to modern science

A Vatican cardinal said today the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks becoming “fundamentalist” if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a press conference on a Vatican project designed to help end the “mutual prejudice” between religion and science that has bedevilled the Catholic Church since before the time of Galileo.

“The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future,” Poupard said.