AWARENESS OF PAPAL STATEMENTS AND EVOLUTION ACCEPTANCE AMONG BRAZILIAN CATHOLIC SEMINARIANS

The current generation of Catholic seminarians is among the first ones to be trained to priesthood in a fully digital age, with unlimited access to sources for news, research, and controversies about science and religion, including the one opposing creationism and Darwinian evolution, despite favorable statements on evolution by twentieth and twenty‐first century Popes. This article presents an online survey conducted in 2019 among 229 Brazilian seminarians; 48 percent of them espoused evolutionary views (below the average of Brazilians, and Brazilian Catholics, polled in 2010 and 2014), while 55.9 percent considered evolution partially or fully compatible with Catholicism. Favorable views on evolution were more frequent among seminarians with a higher knowledge of the theory, and among those aware of papal statements on the subject, although it is not certain whether such awareness is the reason for a higher acceptance of evolution. Establishing relations of causation, which requires further research, can give evolution advocates a valuable tool to improve its acceptance among Catholics.