So the question must be asked: Do those who are in charge of the Vatican’s approach to "modern science" still believe in what the Church teaches concerning the origin of the human race? Or are we witnessing yet another sign of the great apostasy in the Catholic Church beginning at the top, which was predicted by the Third Secret of Fatima?
"Do those who are in charge of the Vatican’s approach to "modern science" still believe in what the Church teaches concerning the origin of the human race?"
Good thing the Vatican Observatory has no authority in the Church whatsoever, and that it forms no part whatsoever of the Magisterium!
This kind of BS is what you get when a Pope surrounds himself with so-called experts in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the majority of whom are non-Catholic and every one of them being an evolutionist.
Evolutionism is the greatest con-trick ever fobbed off on the "scientific community" and because the N.O. Church now affords greater authority to men-in-white-coats than it does to Scripture and Tradition, most Western prelates have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
However, as the Pope's charism extends in no way to the validation of speculative pseudo-scientific theories, the Church will be far less scathed by this silliness than it will by the secondary heresies that "evolutionism" spawns.
The question of origins isn't primarily a religion vs. science issue - it is a science vs. pseudo-science issue and it should be fought out on these grounds.
The Pope/Vatican should learn from the Galileo affair, keep their big gobs shut for once, and science will end up destroying evolutionary theory on technical grounds before he puts his actor's tootsies any further into the poop!