Pope Benedict XVI has marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn't a random product of evolution.

The Pope emphasised the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily in theVatican City, saying it was wrong to think at some point "in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it".

"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature," he said.

"But no, reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason."