Pope Francis has this habit of making simple statements about church teaching that turn into blazing headlines across the world.  In the latest example, he reiterated the Roman Catholic Church’s view that the Big Bang Theory and evolution are real, but not inconsistent with the belief in God.

“When we read about creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything.  But that is not so,” Pope Francis said, knocking down the concept of God as the usually-Caucasian, white-bearded sky daddy we’ve seen in so many paintings.  “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”

If newspapers still had presses, editors would surly have been screaming to stop them as the story came down the newswires.  It certainly seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise, especially after the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI.  But this has been church policy for at least six decades, when Pope Pius XII wrote the “Humani Generis” encyclical which officially accepted science and delinked the creation of the body and soul.  The concept had actually been around the church for decades prior to that, especially since Charles Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”.  And Pope John Paul II further confirmed it during his papacy.

“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it,” Pope Francis said.  “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

Well, there you have it.  Good old Francis knocked down another wall separating people of science and faith, adding to his overall rep of building bridges between people.