A religious primate?

JOHN PAUL II SAW EVOLUTIONARY theories of biology as compatible with the Catholic faith in 1996. But that doesn't mean Darwin can't still shake up the Church. On August 19, Jesuit Fr. George Coyne was suddenly replaced as director of the Specola Vaticana, the Holy See's observatory and main scientific agency. The international press reacted with suspicion; at a conference last year, Coyne had blasted trendy intelligent design theory as "devoid of all scientific basis" and clashed with the influential anti-Darwinist Cardinal Christoph Schonborn. Vatican sources tell the Italian Corriere della Sera (Aug. 25) that Coyne, weakened by chemotherapy for colon cancer, left at his own request. But secular newspapers elsewhere wonder if the 21st century hasn't found its own poor man's Galileo.