Rome - The Catholic Church does not seek to contradict Darwin's theory of evolution, but it rejects as "absurd" attempts by atheists to use it as proof that God doesn't exist, a Vatican cardinal said Tuesday.

"We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God is the creator of all things," Cardinal William Levada said.

Levada, who heads of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was speaking at the start of a Vatican-sponsored academic conference in Rome marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.

The five-day event includes seminars in which scientists, philosophers and theologians are set to discuss the 19th century Briton'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.

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 on the Church's list of banned books.

On Tuesday, Levada said the Vatican believed there was a "wide spectrum of room" for belief in both the scientific basis for evolution and faith in God the creator.

However, he added that while the Vatican did not exclude any area of science, it did reject as "absurd" the atheist notion of biologist and author Richard Dawkins and others that evolution proves there is no God.

Since his 2005 election, Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly stressed that scientific research and knowledge though separate, are not necessarily at odds with religious faith and spirituality.

Ravasi and other Vatican officials have also dismissed as "unscientific" the concept of intelligent design, which is espoused by some anti-evolution Christians who say the universe's complexities must be explained through the actions of a higher power rather than natural selection.

Teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms, as its proponents, mainly in the US, insist, only creates confusion, the Vatican officials said.

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)