And hunted down and killed by same said church too......
Not exactly. The Knights Templar were accused of heresy by King Philip IV of France on Friday Oct. 13th 1307 and on his orders all French Templars were arrested. After that many were tortured into confession (the validity of the confession is highly contested). The Pope then requested all other Catholic rulers to arrest and detain all of the Templars residing in their countries until the Holy See could conduct a trial into their practices. During this trial, the Templars present (including Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master) confessed to a few of their charges but only the minor ones. The Bishops who were conducting the trial decided to forgive the repentant Templars of their sins and return them to full communion within the Catholic Church. Pope Clement V then issued a Papal Bull which abolished the Templar order and gave all of their land and wealth to their sister order the Hospitallers. This angered King Philip because one of his motives in arresting the Templars was no doubt his greed and desire for their wealth to finance the crusade he had just taken up the cross for. The Pope then sentenced the four former leaders of the order to life in prison for their part in allowing the initiation rite to become sinful and allowing practices which contradicted catholic teachings to occur with the order. When this sentence was announced to the four leaders still imprisoned in France, both Jacques de Molay and one other leader took back their initial confession claiming that they had been tortured, and said that the order had done nothing wrong. Because of this King Philip then had the two men burned at the stake.
So the Catholic Church didn't really have much to do with the arrest and execution of the Templars except that Pope Clement V was easily persuaded into shutting down the Order by King Philip's army.
Sorry I couldn't resist spreading my new-found knowledge seeing as I submitted an 8,000 word paper on the topic of the trial of the Templars earlier this week.