He was wrong, as he was about a lot of things. At the philosophical level, science completely negates religion. Belief in God is a massive obstruction on the path of the real quest for truth. God is an all too facile explanation for things that science finds naturally difficult to explain, and that staunches true curiosity and enquiry, sending them down a false path. Worse than that, God himself is the ultimate when it comes to the inexplicable. If he's really there, he'd be hopping mad at us for all that, having supplied us with massive brains to think things through properly. The Pope's remark is simply another example of religion being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world as science closes in.