Vatican City, Mar 24, 2010 / 08:34 am
A “friendship” exists between science and faith, said the Holy Father during his catechesis on Wednesday morning in which he spoke of St. Albert the Great, “one of the greatest teachers of scholastic theology” and the patron of those who study natural sciences. He used the saint’s example to urge young people to seek God’s guidance for their “life project.”
As a teacher, scholar and writer in the 13th century and “being a man of prayer, science and charity,” said the Pope, St. Albert “enjoyed great authority in his interventions, in various events of the Church and of the society of that time.”
There was “something of prodigious” about the culture of the Dominican, the Holy Father said, explaining that beyond philosophy and theology his “encyclopedic interests” included every other known discipline at that time including physics, chemistry, astronomy and even botany and zoology.
Pope Benedict said that this teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas still has much to teach us, particularly, he pointed out, “St. Albert shows us that there is no opposition between faith and science.”