He's at least partly right. Most studies in this area are directly or indirectly sponsored by the church. This doesn't make the sympto-thermal method a religious thing and the studies are still scientific, but the church was one of the few who gave financial aid.

Thing is, the method can be done on a piece of paper. So far, not many people had commercial interest in further research. The few who had, used their finances to build birth-control monitors (a piece of hardware) and tied their studies to their specific products.

So, yeah, the church definitely put money in it whereas not many corporations or investors did.

And I don't want to discount the secular contributions to the research, because they have been there the whole time.

But especially in the Catholic church, after Humanae Vitae, there was a lot of motivation to be able to offer an acceptable alternative to contraception.

I'm glad this is becoming more popular in secular circles. I always figured it would, given how health conscious people have become. Women don't want to eat GMOs or gluten, but are just fine with taking hormones that shut down a major component of the body?

In Humanae Vitae, after the Pope reaffirmed the ban on contraception, he urged scientists to continue researching and improving natural methods. Some Catholic scientists and Catholic universities (Creighton, Marquette, Georgetown, etc.) took him up on it. This is not to belittle non-Catholic contributions, but that's a big reason why so much of the research is from Catholic sources.

(FWIW, the Catholic Church does not consider FABMs to be contraception, but "well-timed abstinence". Some of the Catholic sources can be really confusing if you're not aware of this terminology.)