Vatican City  - A senior Vatican official indicated Tuesday the Roman Catholic Church will not issue a apology to Charles Darwin for the religious controversies around his theory of evolution.

Archbishop Gianfranco 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.

"It is curious and significant, but also indicates the cultural differences between us," Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said of the Anglican initiative.

"Maybe we need to abandon the habit of issuing apologies and treating history as if it were a court always in session," Ravasi said.

He was speaking to journalists about a conference entitled Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories. A Critical Appraisal 150 years after The Origin of Species due to be held in Rome from March 3 to 7, 2009.

The congress has been organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, United States, and will include scientists, philosophers and theologians from around the world.

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

Ravasi stressed that, unlike many Protestant Christians, the Roman Catholic Church never condemned Darwin nor was his book, the Origin of the Species, placed on the church's list of banned books.

Evolution theory "is not incompatible from the outset with the teachings of the Catholic Church, nor the message of the Bible," Ravasi said.

The Rome conference would offer participants an opportunity to debate issues related to evolution on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's book, Ravasi explained.

But he also said the wider relationship between religion and science would also be examined, along guidelines illustrated by late Pope John Paul II.

"Science can purify religion of superstition, but religion can purify science from false absolutes," Ravasi said, quoting John Paul.

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)