Still Running Off at the Keyboard

VATICAN CITY — Ever since the Roman inquisition condemned Galileo for observing that the Earth revolved around the sun, the Vatican has held back from making sweeping challenges to scientific thought for fear of overstepping its bounds.

So it's understandable that Pope Benedict XVI raised eyebrows when he recently described the universe as an "intelligent project that is the cosmos." Not only did he echo the language of the intelligent design movement, he also waded into a controversy that has blurred the boundaries between faith and science in the United States and beyond.

The debate echoing through Vatican corridors these days, however, is whether the pope has given the Catholic Church's tacit support to intelligent design advocates and their ongoing campaign to debunk Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"These allusions are fine, but I hope the pope doesn't take a stand," the Rev. George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, said in an interview.

Coyne, an astronomer and outspoken critic of intelligent design, said that Benedict "doesn't have the slightest idea of what intelligent design means in the U.S."

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