Where did you get this information, Lindy?

I know a few years ago the Jesuit astronomer who ran Mt. Graham
at the time talked with a reporter about his views (not Rome's) on ETI.
He was not speaking officially.

The Church has had rather open views on alien life for a long while now,
certainly better than a number of fundamentalist Protestant groups,
who continue to insist that the Universe was made just for little old
us and nobody else exists beyond Earth.

Despite the bad rap the Roman Catholic Church gets regarding science,
in reality they have often been far more open and supportive of science
than they have been given credit for. For example, did you know that
many Church officials privately accepted and were very excited about
Galileo's discoveries, but his ego and public embarassment of the Pope
and the Church put them in a corner, which was not a smart thing to do
in the early 1600s. Thus the whole bruhaha over the Church oppressing
Galileo and science by default.