The Pontiff denies “creation ex nihilo”?
"....nature is not static, but dynamic, it occasionally undergoes changes. This has been revealed both for cosmic evolution and for the evolution of life. This situation can render the identification of universal laws of nature difficult. For example, recent investigations on biological evolution have revealed that nature actively cares for a slow, but steady progress of evolution towards a richer and more sustainable biodiversity."
Either the Pontiff is woefully ignorant or he embraces cosmic evolution which describes an incremental evolutionary ascent from matter to conscious life over vast periods of time.
Creation ex nihilo bespeaks a fall from the Triune God's good creation making cosmic evolution the antithesis (for that and many other reasons) of creation ex nihilo.
John 1:3 identifies our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity as Creator:
“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” “He was in the world, and the world was made by him” (v. 10). “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (v. 14).
Foremost of His miracles is creation out of nothing—six instantaneous acts or days of creation rather than the billions of years of evolutionary ascent as the wisdom of fallen man holds.
On the miraculous creation of the first man Church Father John Chrysostom writes:
“And God formed man of dust from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul….the inbreathing communicated to the one created out of earth the power of life, and thus the nature of the soul was formed. What does a living soul mean? An active soul, which has the members of the body as the implements of its activities, submissive to its will.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Seraphim Rose, p.215)
Gregory of Nyssa adds:
“The body and the soul were formed at the same time—not one before and the other afterwards…” (ibid, p. 218)
Early Church Fathers make the point that the whole of creation---angels, time, matter, fire, wind, water, herbs, trees, all life and conscious life---was brought into existence from non-existence (ex nihilo), not from anything already in existence as a result of Cosmic Eggs (Big Bang)or from the Essence or Nature of God. Therefore creation does not have the same essence as God and is not a part of God as most ancient and modern mystical pantheists (i.e., Teilhard & his followers such as Leonard Sweet, an Evangelical Protestant) believe.
On July 24, 2009 Pope Benedict XVI delivered a homily in northern Italy’s Cathedral of Aosta before Vespers. Toward the end of his homily he praised the mystical pantheist French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as a model for priests, attributing to him the idea of a cosmic liturgy, which he said was something they should aim to achieve:
“So our address to God becomes an address to ourselves: God invites us to join with him, to leave behind the ocean of evil, hatred, violence and selfishness and to make ourselves known, to enter into the river of his love….”Let Your Church offer herself to You as a living and holy sacrifice. This request, addressed to God, is made also to ourselves. It is a reference to two passages from the Letter to the Romans. We ourselves, with our whole being, must be adoration and sacrifice and, by transforming our world, give it back to God.” (Benedict XVI Praises Cosmic Liturgy of Teilhard de Chardin; traditioninaction.org)
Teilhard (1881-1955) was a heretic, an evolutionary scientist, New Age Hindu-style mystical pantheist whose Omega conception bears a striking resemblance to Brahman, an anthropomorphized energy field known from ancient times as the Abyss, Void, One Substance, Universal Mind and with Leonard Sweet, Quantum Void.
In our time neo-pagan and mystical pantheist evolutionary cosmologies are embraced and advanced within the whole body of the Christian Church.