Aliens, science, and faith

With all the talk of a "war" between science and religion, it's easy to forget that religious scientists, from the monk Gregor Mendel to the century-old Vatican Observatory, have made important contributions to science.
The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the current director of the Vatican Observatory, told an interviewer that religion has nothing to fear from science, and vice-versa. He also has no problem with the idea of other intelligences in the cosmos. "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes asked. He explained that such a stance puts a limit on God's freedom to create, which in Christian doctrine is, by definition, unlimited.
Funes takes an increasingly common Christian view that the Big Bang happened as described by modern physics, but that it's still true "God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance."