Religion and science have never been comfortable bedfellows, because at their core they sharply contrast each other. Science only deals with cold, hard, incontrovertible facts, whilst religion is based on faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”
This has led to several huge battles in the past, mainly the church’s persecution of scientists whose findings often contradict the tenets of religion. Ironically, the Catholic Church remained at the forefront of said persecution for centuries.
One big contention has always been the origins of the world, creation vs. evolution, God vs. Darwin. It is the quintessential religion vs. science debate, and the two have always been seen as mutually exclusive, discouraging religious folks from entertaining the huge possibility that evolution was in fact our origins, since it sharply contradicts the creationist perspective.
But the father of the biggest sect of Christianity worldwide, Pope Francis, has passed comments which point to the veracity of the evolution movement. According to him, the two theories need not cancel each other out, but can co-exist to both explain mankind’s origins.