Rome - A Vatican-sponsored academic conference marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species opened in Rome on Tuesday.

The five-day event includes seminars in which scientists, philosophers and theologians are set to discuss Darwin's theory of evolution in relation to the belief in divine creation.

Bitter divisions separate many who espouse Darwin's theory that species, including humans, evolved through natural selection over hundreds of thousands of years, and others who, interpreting the Bible literally, say the world was created in six days by God, who also made man in his own image.

But in presenting the conference, the Vatican said that the Catholic Church, unlike many Protestant churches, never condemned the British-born Darwin's theory.

In September 2008 president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, also ruled out any apology to Darwin by the Vatican.

Ravasi was commenting on an appeal by the Church of England's public affairs head that the church should say sorry for initially misunderstanding the 19th century English scientist's work.

Evolution theory is "not incompatible from the outset with the teachings of the Catholic Church, nor the message of the Bible," Ravasi said, noting that the Origin of the Species was never placed in the Church's list of banned books.

Ravasi also recalled how the late Pope John Paul II said that evolution was "more than a hypothesis."

Organized by Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University and the US University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the conference is one of two this year sponsored by the Vatican to re-examine the work of scientists whose revolutionary ideas challenged religious belief - Galileo and Darwin.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II publicly expressed regret on how the Catholic Church in the 17th century dealt with Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who was forced to retract his observation that the earth and the other planets revolved around the sun. (dpa)