VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis opened a meeting of the world's bishops on family issues Sunday by forcefully asserting that marriage is an indissoluble bond between man and woman. But he said the church doesn't judge and must "seek out and care for hurting couples with the balm of acceptance and mercy."
Francis dove head-on into the most pressing issue confronting the meeting of 270 bishops during a solemn Mass in St. Peter's Basilica: How to better minister to Catholic families experiencing separation, divorce and other problems when the church's teaching holds that marriage is forever.
He insisted that the church cannot be "swayed by passing fads or popular opinion." But in an acknowledgment that marriages fail, he said the church is also a mother who doesn't point fingers or judge her children.
"The church must search out these persons, welcome and accompany them, for a church with closed doors betrays herself and her mission and instead of being a bridge, becomes a roadblock," he said.
One of the major debates at the synod is whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.
Francis launched the synod process two years ago by sending out a 39-point questionnaire to bishops, parishes and ordinary Catholic families around the world asking about their understanding of and adherence to church teaching on family matters. Their responses showed a widespread rift between official Catholic teaching and practice, particularly on sex, marriage and homosexuality.
A first meeting of bishops ended last October with no consensus on how to better welcome gays and divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in the church. Conservatives insisted that Catholic doctrine is clear and unchanging. Progressives acknowledged the doctrine but sought wiggle room in pastoral practice.
On the eve of the synod, a Vatican monsignor outed himself as gay and denounced widespread homophobia in the church.
The conference was one of many initiatives launched by conservatives in the run-up to the synod aimed at reasserting traditional Catholic teaching on homosexuality, which holds that gays are to be respected but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."
In a clear challenge to that teaching, a mid-level official in the Vatican's orthodoxy office, Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, announced Saturday that he was a proud gay priest with a boyfriend, called for the synod to take up the plight of gays, and denounced homophobia throughout the church.
The Vatican summarily fired him.
Gay rights activists, who were in Rome to try to influence the synod from the sidelines, came to his defense and urged the synod fathers to assert that there is no place for homophobia in the church.
Former Irish President Mary McAleese, a practicing Catholic with a gay son, said she hoped that more transparency would help "kill for once and all this terrible lie" that everyone was born heterosexual.
More movement may emerge on the other hot-button issue, whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.
Catholics who divorce and want to remarry in the church must first obtain an annulment, a ruling from a church tribunal that their first marriage was invalid. Without the annulment, these civilly remarried Catholics are considered to be living in sin and cannot receive Communion, a condition that has led generations of Catholics to feel shunned by their church.
Francis has sought a more merciful approach, insisting that these remarried Catholics be fully part of the life of the church. Progressive prelates led by German Cardinal Walter Kasper have called for a process by which a bishop could accompany these remarried Catholics on a path of penance that, over time and on a case-by-case basis, could lead to them receiving the sacraments.
On Saturday, an openly gay former student of Pope Francis' who visited with the pope during his recent trip to Washington said he was surprised Francis had met with the Kentucky county clerk who gained attention for refusing to issue same-sex couples marriage licenses.
The pope's meeting with Washington resident Yayo Grassi, his boyfriend and a few others came to light Friday as the Vatican was distancing itself from claims the pope's meeting with the clerk, Kim Davis, was an endorsement of her stance on same-sex marriage.
Grassi, 67, met the man then known as Jorge Bergoglio more than 50 years ago when the future pope taught at his all-boys school in Argentina. They reconnected in 2008. Francis has met Grassi and his boyfriend of 17 years twice since becoming pope, once in Rome and most recently in Washington, Grassi said.
He said he told friends who were quick to criticize that they should not rush to judgment and that he didn't think they had all the facts. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, declined to say who invited Davis or what the pope knew of her case, but such encounters are arranged by the Vatican ambassador and his staff, not the pope's delegation or the U.S. bishops' conference.
Grassi said after the Davis story came out and he was contacted by the media he thought: "Perhaps this is the time to defend him. I owe him that as a friend, not because he is a friend but because I know part of the truth."
Grassi said "encouraging somebody who is so divisive" like Davis would be out of character for Francis.
"Here is this guy that is so much into integrating everybody, communicating with everybody," Grassi said, adding he was "500 percent sure" the pope did not initiate the meeting with Davis.
Information for this article was contributed by Nicole Winfield and Jessica Gresko of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/05/2015