Even if we accept this account, it doesn't help with the theory that Lemaitre is somehow of the tradition of Aquinas and his theory is essentially religious in nature.
Aquinas lived in a creationist era. His ex nihilo model was employed to distinguish whether a designer God created the world out of pre-existing matter (ex materia) or out of nothing. This same debate was had by Plato, and was addressed in the Koran. Unlike the folks in Christian Europe, the Moslems held onto the works of antiquity. These works became known to European scholastic priests (like Aquinas) at this time as exposure to Islam accelerated following the Crusades, recovery of Moslem Spain etc. The wisdom of pagan Greece and Rome returned to Europe from the East. No wonder Aquinas reintroduced ideas like origin ex nihilo to Christendom. But he burdened them with a traditional Creationist model.
Even so, from a modern perspective, ex nihilo isn't a religious position. It merely permits the possibility of a first mover, where the eternal universe model made God redundant, more-or-less. And actually, the idea of an infinite number of parallel universes has much the same effect. The quality of geographical and temporal infinity doesn't suit the idea of a personally interested, first mover God very well.
But ex nihilo doesn't require a God either. There might be any number of explanations for the initiation of Big Bang. Only one theory employs a rule-making initiator. So Lemaitre opens the door but cannot close the deal via Big Bang.
Even if Lemaitre began speculating using a phrase employed by Aquinas (and derived from non-Christian philosophy), his theory is based on modern Einstein-related physics. His and Hubble's models were both dependent on the redshift Doppler effect emitted by stars speeding away from earth in all directions. This is the effect you say has been proved false but upon which Big Bang theory depends. It's science based on evidence. It ain't religion based on faith. Religion stops being religion once it depends on observation.
Remove a star. Wish edit and recommend weren't so close.
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