The day after the Church of England issued an “apology” for having “misunderstood” the work of Charles Darwin, the Vatican has announced that it will organise a debate on the thorny question of Christian belief and the theory of evolution.

Two Cambridge lecturers, the archaeologist Lord Renfrew, and the paleontologist Simon Conway Morris. will join an international line-up of scientists, theologians, philosophers debating faith and evolution at a Vatican-sponsored event in Rome. The five-day encounter, entitled Biological Evolution, Facts and Theories. A critical appraisal 150 after "The Origin of Species" has been timetabled to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin's seminal work on the theory of evolution. Forty-eight speakers will speak at the conference, which begins on March 3rd 2009.

The organisers said today that the Roman Catholic Church had never condemned either evolution or Charles Darwin. Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said that evolution was not “a priori incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church, with the message of the Bible”. He added that On the Origin of the Species had never featured on the “index”, a list of books once banned by the Roman Catholic Church as it was considered that their contents could endanger the morals of believers.

Mgr Ravasi termed the Anglican apology for having condemned Darwin both “curious and significant”. He said that it showed “a mentality different than ours". An open dialogue between faith and science especially in the light of new developments should be encouraged, “without forcing an accord that doesn’t exist,” Mgr Ravasi added. Other organisers cited Pope Pius XII who said in 1950 that the Church did not prohibit the study of evolution, and Pope John Paul II who said in 1995 that Darwinism was no longer considered “a mere hypothesis”.

The debate, part of a Vatican-sponsored project called STOQ (Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest) which seeks to explore the relationship between science and ethical and moral questions, is said to have the full blessing of Pope Benedict, a fervent advocate of what he views as the compatibilty of faith with reason. The March conference is being jointly organised by the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, and Notre Dame University, Indiana.

Phillip R. Sloan, a professor of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame University, said that the challenges which evolution poses for contemporary Catholics were “enormous” and will only increase because of “the ethical and theological questions that have emerged” due to scientific advances in areas such as biotechnology, stem cell research, cloning and brain research.

Sloan added: “There is no mention of evolution in the Catechism [the official teaching document of the Roman Catholic Church]; people don’t even know where we stand on it.” He claimed that the March meeting was so important that organisers foresee that it will “change the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the world of science.”

Father Marc LeClerc SJ, a professor of philosophy at the Gregorian University, said that the discussion was necessary because Darwin “is increasingly discussed in ideological terms rather than, as was intended, in scientific terms.” He said that proponents of creationism and “intelligent design” had “generated much confusion, leading to a head-on confrontation between “creationism” and “evolutionism”. Intelligent design proponents, he said, accept the theory of evolution, but “as if only the “intelligent design” of God could explain the processes of evolution.”

The two ideas will be explored at the debate, he said, but they are not considered scientific and so will not be treated as such. He said pure neodarwinian theory “is revealing its limits, as we can see in many areas of research. But this will be discussed with exclusively scientific arguments.”