the catholic church has traditionally been pro-science, the contrast with science is a modern development. There's a ton of Catholic clergy who were scientists[0], many of those well known (Mersenne, Mendel, Copernicus, Venturi etc).

Even the epitome of the science-church conflict, the Galileo story, started from a scientific disagreement before the religious one[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_Mersenne

[0] https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-sma...