How did many of the pioneers of contemporary science think about Christ and the Catholic Church? – Below, some quotes...

"God, when he created the world, moved each body in his orb as he pleased, and is so moving them impressed upon them the “impeti” with which they moved, without any need to move them again"
Jean Buridan

"In all my works nobody could find the least shadow of something recusable regarding the piety and the reverence due to the Holy Church"
Galileo Galilei

"This most beautiful system of Sun, Planets and Comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being"
Isaac Newton

"I studied largely the fundamental and bases of religion [...] that any spirit not perverted by sin and passion, any spirit spontaneously noble, should love it and accept it"
Alessandro Volta

"We can only see the handiwork of the Creator, but, through them, we can rise to the knowledge of the Creator himself"
André Marie Ampère

 
"We are therefore unable to adscribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call naturals"
James Clark Maxwell

"My early impressions that scientific truths were respect to the Christian religion something akin to the springs and rivers respect to the ocean became my most vital conviction"
Julius Robert von Mayer

"If you think strong enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion"
Lord Kelvin

"Over the entrance of Science’s temple are written these words: “You must believe”. This is something without which the man of science cannot cope"
Max Planck

"Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one other. They are, in the sense that the thumb and the fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by mean of which anything can be grasped"
Sir William H. Bragg