Pope Francis holds a cross during a meeting with members of the Schoenstatt movement at the Vatican on Saturday. (Associated Press)
Pope Francis on Monday said the "Big Bang" theory as a model for the origin of the Universe "does not rule out the intervention of a divine Creator, but rather demands it" and that "the origin of the world is not a product of chaos, but is derived directly from the supreme power that created love."
The Pope made the remarks during a speech Monday at the inauguration of a bronze bust depicting his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
The Pontiff criticised the interpretation of the creation myth found in the Book of Genesis that assumes that "God was a magician" who created things "with a magic wand."
"He created beings and left them to develop in accordance with the internal laws he gave to each one, so that they could evolve and reach their fullest state," Pope Francis argued.
Thus, the creation process has been going on for centuries and millennia until life became what we presently know, he underlined.