Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who discovered the universe is expanding

That was more of a musing on the part of P. Pius XII because he had been preoccupied with the philosophical side of showing God's existence, and saw some potential synergy. In his Un'Ora speech, where he was actively contemplating the primeval atom hypothesis:

...contemporary science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux, which along with the matter there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation... Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, modern science has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the creator

However, before his speech to the Eighth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rome, Lemaître consulted with the Pope's secretary as well as his science advisor, and Pius's further statements dropped references to the "primeval atom" hypothesis:

the human spirit, upon considering the vast paths traveled by galaxies, becomes in some manner a spectator at the cosmic events that occurred on the very morning of creation

Despite this, it was enough to fuel criticism of concordism (the belief that the Bible contains hidden scientific facts). Lemaître addressed those by invoking a separation of concerns: Philosophy and theology are concerned about the "why?" and science is concerned about the "how?"; the two need not overlap. In his words:

Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes... The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses... As a matter of fact neither Saint Paul nor Moses had the slightest idea of relativity

More info and actual sources: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?rec...

At first, I read this title as

> Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who discovered the universe, is expanding

A subtle, but important, distinction.

In the US/UK civil engineering is often taken to mean constructing buildings (very roughly, in a nutshell), whereas other countries (in particular continental Europe) use the meaning that you quote. So you can have a Belgian civil engineer who specializes in theoretical physics, and knows more about the Higgs boson than about "traditional" engineering topics.

In Belgium, there are 'civil engineers' that know nothing about the construction of roads buildings or bridges, but are specialised in electronics, computer science, thermodynamics, ... .

In the case of Lemaitre, he was studying this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_engineering

Einstein's initial reaction was the same before he changed his mind.

However, there are two points worth making. First, that something supports or can be used to support religious claims does not undermine that something (evidence, argument, whatever). It would be tendentious to do so. Second, creation as understood in Catholicism is not the same as creation in time. The notion that the universe was created in time was given serious consideration IIRC in the 12th century, but theologians like Aquinas held that it was not metaphysically provable whether the universe was in fact created in time or not. Creation as understood by theologians is creation from nothing, the continuous creation or sustaining of things in existence. I.e., we cannot explain the existence of things at any moment by appealing to anything about these things themselves or to their efficient causes, and so we need to appeal to a cause distinct from them and one which transcends the order of things. While creation in time may appeal to certain sensibilities, it is not itself demanded by Catholic theology.