Bishops scrap welcome to gays in sign of split

The Vatican said English-speaking bishops had requested the changes.

Francis insisted in the name of transparency that the full document — including the paragraphs that failed to pass — be published along with the voting tally. The document will serve as the basis for future debate leading up to another meeting of bishops next October.

The revised report of the two-week meeting of bishops had been rewritten to incorporate amendments to the draft released Monday which had shown an unprecedented openness toward gays and Catholics who live together without being married.

Conservatives had harshly criticized the draft and proposed extensive revisions to restate church doctrine, which holds that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered," but that gays themselves are to be respected and that marriage is only between a man and woman.

"We could see that there were different viewpoints," said Cardinal Oswald Gracis of India, when asked about the most contentious sections of the report on homosexuals and divorced and remarried Catholics.

German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the leader of the progressive camp, said he was "realistic" about the outcome.

Francis' chastisement of bishops who were overly wed to doctrine and were guided by "hostile rigidity" as well as those bishops who showed a "destructive goody-goodiness" indicated that he was well aware of the divisions the debate had sparked. His speech received a four-minute standing ovation, participants said.

Over the past week, the bishops split themselves up into working groups to draft amendments to the text. They were nearly unanimous in insisting that church doctrine on family life be more fully asserted and that faithful Catholic families should be held up as models rather than focus on family problems and "irregular" unions.

The bishops signaled a similar tone in a separate message directed at Christian families released Saturday. There was no mention whatsoever of families with gay children, much less gay parents.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic gay rights group in the United States, said it was "very disappointing that the synod's final report did not retain the gracious welcome to lesbian and gay people that the draft of the report included."

"Instead, the bishops have taken a narrow view of pastoral care by defining it simply as opposition to marriage for same-gender couples," he said.

The Vatican document will now serve for further reflection among Catholics around the world ahead of another, definitive synod next year.

Al Jazeera and wire services