From the Vatican Information Service:
VATICAN CITY, 31 OCT 2008 (VIS) - Today the Pope received members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences whose plenary assembly is meeting from 31 October to 3 November on the theme of: "Scientific Insight into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life".
At the beginning of his address, the Holy Father asserted that both Pius XII just as John Paul II highlighted the fact that "there is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences. Philosophy in its early stages had proposed images to explain the origin of the cosmos on the basis of one or more elements of the material world. This genesis was not seen as a creation, but rather a mutation or transformation".
"In order to develop and evolve, the world must first 'be', and thus have come from nothing into being. It must be created, in other words, by the first Being who is such by essence".
"To state that the foundation of the cosmos and its developments is the provident wisdom of the Creator is not to say", Benedict XVI continued, "that creation has only to do with the beginning of the history of the world and of life. It implies, rather, that the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously".
While recalling that Galileo "saw nature as a book whose author is God in the same way that Scripture has God as its author", the Pope emphasized that "this image also helps us to understand that the world, far from originating out of chaos, resembles an ordered book; it is a cosmos".
"The distinction between a simple living being and a spiritual being that is 'capax Dei', points to the existence of the intellective soul of a free transcendent subject". This is why, he concluded, "the Magisterium of the Church has constantly affirmed that 'every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not 'produced' by the parents - and also that it is immortal'. This points to the distinctiveness of anthropology and invites exploration of it by modern thought".
For much more on these topics, see 
Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI, compiled by Stephan Otto Horn, S.D.S., and Siegfried Wiedenhofer, and published earlier this year by Ignatius Press:
In 2005 the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn wrote a guest editorial in The New York Times that sparked a worldwide debate about “Creation and Evolution”. Pope Benedict XVI instructed the Cardinal to study more closely this problem and the current debate between “evolutionism” and “creationism,” and asked the yearly gathering of his former students to address these questions.
Even after Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he has continued to maintain close contact with the circle of his former students. The "study circle" (Schulerkrers) meets once a year with Pope Benedict XVI for a conference. Many of these former Ratzinger students have gone on to become acclaimed scholars, professors and writers, as well as high ranking Church prelates.
This book documents the proceedings of the remarkable conference on the topic of “Creation and Evolution” hosted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 at the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. It includes papers that were presented from the fields of natural science, philosophy and theology, and records the subsequent discussion, in which Pope Benedict XVI himself participated.
“Ultimately it comes down to the alternative: What came first? Creative
Reason, the Creator Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth,
or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, strangely enough brings forth
a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The
latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of
evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we
say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth. I
believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of
everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason.”
— Pope Benedict XVI
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:
• Excerpts from Chance or Purpose: Creation, Evolution,
and a Rational Faith | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• The Mystery of Human Origins | Mark Brumley
• The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview
with physicist Dr. Stephen Barr | Mark Brumley
• The Universe is Meaning-full | An interview with Dr. Benjamin
Wiker, co-author of A Meaningful World | Carl E. Olson
• Designed Beauty and Evolutionary Theory | Thomas Dubay, S.M.
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