I fed “Pontifical Academy of Sciences” into Google and it promptly came up with a copy of the full address.

Here are a few comments.

Pope John Paul II on Evolution.

The Pope delivered a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 22 October 1996. The message was delivered in French, and the Pope referred to the encyclical “Humani Generis” (1950) of Pope Pius XII, in which he (Pius XII) referred to evolution as a hypothesis worthy of investigation and study. The relevant paragraph of John Pauls’s address, ignoring accents on vowels, was:

Aujourd’hui, pres d’un semi-siecle apres la parution de l’encyclique, de nouvelles connaissances conduisent a reconnaitre dans la theorie de l’evolution plus qu’une hypothese. Il est en effet remarquable que cette theorie se soit progressivement imposee a l’esprit des chercheurs, a la suite d’une serie de decouvertes faites dans diverses disciplines du svaoir. La convergence, nullement recherchee ou provoquee, des resultats de travaux menes independamment les uns des autres, constitue par elle-meme un argument significatif en faveur de cette theorie.

The first official English translation of the first sentence here read:

Today, more than [sic] a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of more than one hypothesis within the theory of evolution.

This was subsequantly officially revised to read:

Today, more than [sic] a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.

“more than” should be replaced by “almost” or “nearly” as a translation of “pres de”. My high school French teacher (1944-46) would have made a rude comment if I’d translated “pres” as “more than”, and my senior years (1947-48) teacher would have been even more critical. And “almost half a century ago” would be a more felicitous rendering.

You can read the whole of the address (corrected version) at http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM

See the note at the bottom about the above revision. This note also provides a link to Humani Generis for those who want to follow the topic further.

Salaam Ken Smith

— Dr Ken Smith – Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, … “I also have no desire to insult, denigrate, or argue against anyone’s religious beliefs, as long as they do not use scientific data incorrectly to support these beliefs.” Philip Plait in “Bad Astronomy”