AKIPRESS.COM - Halfway through the Vatican synod on the family, Pope Francis has scored a first quiet victory.

He has convinced many Catholic Church leaders to moderate their formerly strongly critical language about gay unions, and to admit that homosexuals may have "gifts and qualities to offer".

The tone of a preliminary position paper drawn up by about 200 bishops after a week of closed-door discussions shows compassion and understanding not only towards people in single-sex unions, but also to heterosexual couples who live together without marrying and divorced couples who enter a second marriage without bothering to obtain a Church annulment, according to media reports.

The bishops made it clear that there can be no change in basic Catholic teaching on the permanence of the marriage bond, and insist that a valid marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

But Pope Francis's change of emphasis on concentrating upon positive rather than negative aspects of human sexuality seems to have won over many bishops attending the synod.

His predecessor, Pope Benedict, referred to homosexual relationships as "intrinsically disordered" in a Vatican document written in 1986 when Benedict was chief theological adviser to Pope John Paul II.

Pope Francis on the other hand told journalists last year: "If a person seeks God and has goodwill, then who am I to judge?"

He is the first pontiff ever to have used the word "gay" in public rather than refer to "homosexuals".