Charles Darwin

Born: February 12, 1809

Died: April 19, 1882

When Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago this month, no one could have guessed the impact his Origin of Species (1859) would have not only on science but on religion as well.

“The name Darwin symbolizes a massive transition of our self-understanding,” Boston College Professor Stephen Pope said in a recent talk at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. “Instead of descended from a primal couple specially created by God about 10,000 years ago, we now regard our species as the product of an evolutionary stream of life that has been running at least 4 billion years.”

—A U.S. Catholic interview with Prof. Stephen Pope