Pope Francis has opted for no change in the Catholic approach to homosexuality but signalled a more open stance on cohabiting and divorced believers under new Church guidelines on family life.
In his 260-page Apostolic Exhortation, a long-awaited document which is likely to disappoint advocates of more radical change, the Pope strongly reiterates the Church's opposition to the legal recognition of gay relationships.
He said gay people should be respected, but firmly re-stated the Catholic Church's position that there are "absolutely no grounds" to equate gay unions to heterosexual marriage.
In the treatise also known as Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) the Pope called for a Church that is less strict and more compassionate towards "imperfect" Catholics, such as those who divorced and remarried.
He quoted Martin Luther King, Argentine Poet Jorge Luis Borges and the 1987 Danish cult film Babette's Feast, to make his case for a more merciful and loving Church.
The keenest anticipation was around what he would say about the full re-integration into the Church of Catholics who divorce and remarry in civil ceremonies.
Under current Church teaching they cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner because their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church and they are seen to be living in an adulterous state of sin.
The only way such Catholics can remarry is if they receive an annulment a religious ruling that their first marriage never existed because of the lack of certain pre-requisites such as psychological maturity or free will.
"No-one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!" Pope Francis said.
"Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves."
