ROME
Voice of America

VOA News
Last updated on: October 24, 2015

Pope Francis said Saturday that a strongly divided gathering of bishops called to soften church doctrine on divorce, unmarried couples and homosexuals “laid bare” what he called “the closed hearts which frequently hide behind the church’s teachings and good intentions.”

The pontiff’s forceful critique of ultraconservative bishops came at the Vatican at the close of a three-week synod that saw conservatives resist papal calls to make the 1.2 billion-member church more welcoming and inclusive to gays and to divorcees who have remarried outside the church.

Francis accused those bishops of judging, “sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.”