Has Pope Benedict embraced intelligent design? Not exactly – but many of those who back ID will draw encouragement from his remarks.

In Rome memories are still vivid of the Pope’s sacking last year of the Vatican's chief astronomer after he said that "intelligent design" was not science and did not belong in classrooms.

Father George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution was "like mixing apples with oranges".

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," Father Coyne said.

Supporters of ID hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. But critics say that is merely creationism, a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation, by another name.

"God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity," Father Coyne wrote in The Tablet.

His departure was interpreted by some as meaning that Pope Benedict supported ID, in impression reinforced when the Pope suggested the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticised those who "in the name of science" said creation was without direction or order.

The Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who is close to Benedict, has also appeared to back intelligent design, dismissing a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that Darwin's theory of evolution was "more than just a hypothesis" as "rather vague and unimportant."

The latest debate has arisen because of the publication in Germany of Creation and Evolution, a summary of the Pope's discussion of Darwinism at Castelgandolfo late last summer with fellow theologians, behind closed doors. We learn that the Pope praised scientific progress, but observed that evolution raises questions science alone cannot answer.

"The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science," the Pope said.

"I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science... the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory."

In other words, a cautious and balanced assessment, not a radical endorsement of either ID or creationism. "Benedict re-reads Darwin" said the headline today in La Repubblica, which seems about right. But no doubt that will not stop "ID" advocates claiming from now on that the Pope is on their side.