Vatican cardinal: Respect science

VATICAN CITY — A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

Poupard said science, too, should listen to religion: "We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: The atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link."

"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism."

"The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."