The World Meeting of Families, the central religious event of Pope Francis' first visit to the United States, is intended to convey a message of love and joy as it seeks to promote church teaching on marriage. Yet four weeks away from its opening in Philadelphia, friction is mounting as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Roman Catholics lobby for a broader role in the event and organizers move to limit them.
The tensions surrounding the gathering will pose a real-world test of the pope's approach that emphasizes compassion and welcome while upholding Catholic doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
The only speakers specifically addressing LGBT issues at the Sept. 22-27 conference are a celibate gay man and his mother. Gays and lesbians can attend the meeting as individuals, but groups supporting gay marriage were denied exhibit space and other official options for presenting their views.
Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group for LGBT Catholics, said Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, the meeting's host, and other U.S. bishops "are putting their heads in the sand."
"They see LGBT issues as a problem to contain rather than to explore," DeBernardo said. "The entire Catholic community in the U.S. is having a discussion on this now. Why can't the World Meeting of Families?"
To counter the official message, New Ways Ministry and several allied groups have scheduled various programs - including a workshop on gender identity - to coincide with the Meeting of Families.
Another area of contention is the status of openly gay employees at Catholic institutions in the U.S. Dozens of people have reported losing their jobs at such workplaces since 2010 over their same-sex relationships or support for gay marriage and gay rights, including Margie Winters, a married gay teacher dismissed in June by a Catholic school in Philadelphia.
The World Meeting of Families is a triennial Vatican-backed event, held seven times previously starting in 1994 with the goal of strengthening marriage and families. The Philadelphia meeting will be the first in the United States.
The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Kenneth Hackett, noting in an interview with the Associated Press gay marriage is now "the law of our land," said: "How the pope will deal with that, I think it might be one of the issues of nontraditional marriage that he speaks about or he alludes to."
More than two years into his papacy, Francis has disappointed some conservative American Catholics by not speaking about church teaching on marriage as frequently as his predecessors. Instead, he has emphasized compassion over defending the church on divisive social issues as he tries to bring back Catholics who have left the fold.
In 2013, he seemed to extend that attitude to gays when he responded to a question about a purportedly gay priest by saying, "If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?" However, Francis has also affirmed same-sex relationships and marriages are contrary to church teaching.
Still, nearly 4 in 10 Catholics surveyed by the Public Religion Research Institute and Religion News Service mistakenly believe Francis supports allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally.
Among the more than 15,000 Catholics registered for the meeting are 22 people representing LGBT families on behalf of a coalition called Equally Blessed.
Among them is Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of the LGBT Catholic group Dignity USA. She'll attend with her wife and two daughters.
"We want to be a visible presence, with the message that LGBT families are part of the church," said Duddy-Burke.
Among the conservative Catholic groups that have been allocated exhibit space at the meeting is Courage International, which describes its core mission as trying to help people with same-sex attractions lead chaste lives.
Another speaker will be Douglas Farrow, a professor of Christian thought at McGill University in Montreal. He has written extensively about what he perceives as the harmful consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage, and says the Catholic Church needs to remain firm, but not antagonistic, in promoting its vision of heterosexual marriage.
"Of course there is room for improvement in the way the church responds to its people," Farrow said. "The church in America needs to be more thoroughly comfortable in its own theological skin ... in order to be more comfortable in these conversations that are so fraught about what marriage is."
Ken Gavin, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, expressed hope that differences on LGBT issues would not spark animosity.
"It is very much possible to show Christian charity and love for all even if you disagree with their point of view," he said in an email.