Kentucky clerk Kim Davis met with pope

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman in Rome, said he had no comment on the topic but didn't deny the encounter took place.

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis and her husband met privately with Francis on Thursday afternoon at the Vatican Embassy in Washington for less than 15 minutes, said her lawyer, Mat Staver.

Davis, an Apostolic Christian, spent five days in jail earlier this month for defying a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In a telephone interview late Tuesday, Staver would not say who initiated the meeting with the pope or how it came to be, though he did say Vatican officials inquired about Davis' situation while she was in jail. He declined to name them.

The meeting was first reported by Inside the Vatican, a publication edited by Robert Moynihan, an American who has covered the Vatican for many years, according to The New York Times.

Davis was in Washington for the Values Voter Summit, where the Family Research Council, which opposes same-sex marriage, presented her with an award for defying the federal judge.

Francis did not focus on the divisive debate over same-sex marriage during his visit last week. During his address to Congress on Thursday, he said, “I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without,” in what could be a reference to same-sex marriage.

He alluded to the church’s objections to gay marriage during some of his U.S. talks, citing concerns about "juridical" changes to the definition of the family. Still, he largely avoided the issue, the subject of intense debate.

As he left the country, he told reporters aboard the papal plane who inquired that he did not know Davis' case in detail, but he defended conscientious objection as a human right.

"It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right," Francis said.

Al Jazeera with wire services