Pope Francis waves as he leads the weekly audience in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican, September 30, 2015. 
 
 VATICAN CITY Pope Francis' meeting last week with an American woman at the center of a row over gay marriage was not something he had sought and should not be seen as an endorsement of her views, the Vatican said on Friday. 
 
 One Vatican official said there was "a sense of regret" that the pope had ever seen Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who went to jail in September for refusing to honor a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and issue same-sex marriage licenses. 
 
 The encounter in Washington was originally kept secret and has sparked widespread debate since it became public this week, proving something of a misstep for the pontiff. 
 
 Looking to smother the fierce controversy, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Davis was one of "several dozen" people who had been invited by the Vatican ambassador to see Francis during his visit to the U.S. capital. 
 
 "The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects," Lombardi said in a statement. 
 
 "The only real audience granted by the Pope at the Nunciature (Vatican embassy) was with one of his former students and his family," the statement said. 
 
 The Vatican later confirmed on Friday that the pope met with Yayo Grassi, a U.S.-based Argentine caterer who is gay and brought his male partner of 19 years to the meeting. 
 
 Grassi, 67, has known the pope since Francis taught him literature and psychology at a high school in Argentina in the 1960s and has stayed in touch. 
 
 "What I can say is that he met with me knowing that I am gay, and we had an extraordinary, very moving conversation," Grassi told Reuters. 
 
 EMBASSY UNDERESTIMATED SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 The meeting with Davis disappointed many liberal Catholics but delighted conservatives, who saw it as a sign that the pope was clearly condemning a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. 
 
 Davis said on Wednesday that the pope had thanked her for her courage and told her to "stay strong," adding that knowing that he agreed with what she was doing "kind of validates everything." 
 
 While Lombardi declined to take questions on the incident, his assistant, Father Tom Rosica, a Canadian priest, laid the blame on the Vatican embassy in Washington, saying it had underestimated the impact of Davis's presence at the reception. 
 
 "I'm not sure that they (the embassy) realized how significant it would be," he told reporters. 
 
 Rosica said he did not believe the pope was even indirectly involved in inviting Davis, adding that the greeting was very brief and that she and her husband were among the many guests at the Washington embassy before the pope left for New York. 
 
 Rosica said he did not know if there had been a private meeting. Davis' lawyer, Mat Staver, said the couple were not in a line, that the meeting was private and seen only by Vatican personnel and security. 
 
 "Had Kim Davis been in a line of people or been seen by anyone outside of Vatican personnel, we would not have been able to keep her visit secret," he said in a statement. 
 
 Rosica said the pope was most likely not fully aware of how controversial a figure Davis had become. 
 
 "I would simply say her case is a very complex case. It has all kinds of intricacies. Was there an opportunity to brief the pope on this beforehand? I don't think so. Was an in-depth process done? No, probably not," Rosica said. 
 
 Asked if the pope had been set up intentionally by someone in the embassy, Rosica said: "No, reading all of the information, listening to all of the facts, these things happen." 
 
 Rosica said he also doubted that Davis and her husband spent 15 minutes with the pope, as her lawyer had reported, saying "there simply was not enough time". 
 
 Davis has said her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian prevent her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her church belongs to a Protestant movement known as Apostolic Pentecostalism. 
 
 Rosica said he hoped the Davis incident and its aftermath would not distract from the significance of the U.S. trip. 
 
 "The visit was extraordinary ... so to allow this to kind of overshadow it would be very unfortunate. This is not the centerpiece of the papal visit. This is one small part of it, but it is a loaded centerpiece." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Steve Bittenbender in Louisville, Kentucky and Alistair Bell in Washington DC; Editing by Crispian Balmer, Ralph Boulton, Richard Balmforth and Jonathan Oatis) ||||| UPDATE: Pope Francis also met with a same-sex couple while he was in Washington last week. 
 
 Updated 10/02/15 – 2:27 p.m. 
 
 (CBS) — Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich is on his way to Rome tonight. Before he left, he spoke out for the first time on that controversial meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses. 
 
 Cupich in essence told CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine not to read too much into it. 
 
 A highly placed source inside the Vatican claims the Pope was blindsided. 
 
 The Vatican has since tried to distance Pope Francis from Davis. Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the pope’s meeting with Davis was not an endorsement of her decision to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses. 
 
 “The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” he said. 
 
 Lombardi said the Vatican wanted to “clarify” what happened “in order to contribute to an objective understanding of what transpired.” 
 
 “Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the Pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family,” he said. 
 
 CBS News has confirmed that former student was Yayo Grassi, an openly gay Argentine, who visited Pope Francis with his longtime partner and some friends. 
 
 “Mr. Yayo Grassi, a former Argentine student of Pope Francis, who had already met other times in the past with the Pope, asked to present his mother and several friends to the Pope during the Pope’s stay in Washington, DC,” a statement from Lombardi to CBS News reads. “As noted in the past, the Pope, as pastor, has maintained many personal relationships with people in a spirit of kindness, welcome and dialogue.” 
 
 The latest revelations from the Vatican put an entirely new spin on the pope’s meeting with Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who went to jail after refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. 
 
 As Pope Francis was addressing a joint session of Congress, and thousands more gathered outside on the west lawn, Davis — who’d become the poster child for opponents of same-sex marriage — was getting ready for a meeting with the pontiff at the Vatican embassy. 
 
 It is a meeting some charge was orchestrated by the man who lived there, the Pope’s representative here, Carlo Maria Vigano. 
 
 Not even Lombardi knew about it ahead of time, nor did the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which would have opposed it. 
 
 Others claim the Pope knew about the meeting, and had ordered Vatican diplomats — perhaps even Vigano — to set it up. 
 
 CBS 2’s Vatican source doesn’t think so. A close advisor to Pope Francis tweeted that the Pope was, in his words, “exploited” by those who set up what the CBS 2 source says was a “meeting that never should have taken place.” 
 
 Some call it an attempt by highly placed church leaders in the U.S. to diminish the impact of the Pope’s visit. 
 
 Cupich tried to downplay both the meeting and its significance. 
 
 “It is his way of saying that walls of communication need to come down. Meeting with someone is not an endorsement of that person’s position,” Cupich said. 
 
 The questions of what did the Pope know and when did he know continue being debated in newspaper headlines, blog posts and on twitter feeds. 
 
 Pope Francis presides over what promises to be a contentious three-week meeting of bishops in Rome, with a number of hot-button issues on the table. ||||| Pope Francis secretly met with Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, during his visit to the U.S. (Reuters) 
 
 Two days after news of a Kim Davis-Pope Francis meeting renewed the U.S. fascination over what this pope stands for, the Vatican on Friday put out a statement that appeared to downgrade the visit’s significance, saying it should “not be considered a form of support” of the Kentucky clerk’s “position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” 
 
 Davis, an Apostolic Christian who went to jail rather than allow her office to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has become a polarizing figure in the country’s debate over religious freedom. 
 
 [New: Pope Francis reportedly met with a same-sex couple the day before he met with Kim Davis] 
 
 Since the revelation that she met with Francis — an event that was announced by her lawyer, not the Vatican, and kept secret until after the pope had returned to Rome — church insiders have been furiously swapping rumors about who exactly set up the meeting, which U.S. bishops knew of it, who was happy about it and who was upset. 
 
 The meeting was cheered by conservatives, who view Francis with suspicion because of previous statements that appeared to be accepting of homosexuality. But it was greeted with dismay by liberals, who have embraced Francis precisely because of his reluctance to engage in U.S. culture wars and his “who-am-I-to-judge” attitude. 
 
 Church leaders in the United States and in Rome have been resolutely tight-lipped about the meeting, perhaps concerned about the prospect of appearing to publicly rebuke or challenge the pope, particularly on such a sensitive issue. At the same time, church-watchers have debated and swapped rumors about who set up the meeting, whether it was at the behest of the pope himself, or whether it was an idea pushed by other bishops or religious freedom advocates or donors. 
 
 [Meet Yayo Grassi, the gay man who is friends with Pope Francis] 
 
 Among those who declined to comment was the Rev. Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, at whose residence the meeting took place. 
 
 On Friday, the Vatican said Davis was among “a number of guests” who were “invited by the Nuncio,” a church term for the ambassador, to greet the pope. “Very brief greetings,” the Rev. Thomas Rosica, an English-language spokesman for the Vatican, told the Associated Press. “And in the pope’s characteristic kindness and warmth and hospitality, he shook people’s hands and gave them rosaries. We should understand it as that. In terms of why this person was invited, you have to ask those questions of the nunciature.” 
 
 A controversial figure both in Rome and in the United States, Viganò has gone further than other church leaders in his campaign against same-sex marriage. Among other things, he appeared at an event this year with the National Organization for Marriage, a group that vocally opposes same-sex marriage and with which U.S. bishops typically don’t publicly ally. 
 
 [Who is the Rev. Carlo Maria Viganò?] 
 
 A Vatican statement issued Friday by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, another papal spokesman, seemed aimed at quelling speculation about the meeting’s significance. 
 
 “The brief meeting between Mrs. Kim Davis and Pope Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C. has continued to provoke comments and discussion,” the statement said. “…The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” 
 
 Rosica tweeted out two separate stories Friday about Lombardi’s statement, each of which said it made clear the papal visit was not a validation of Davis’s actions. 
 
 Vatican distances Pope Francis from Kentucky clerk Kim Davis http://t.co/paCNrNOR8v — Thomas Rosica (@FatherRosica) October 2, 2015 
 
 In response to the Vatican statements, Mat Staver, a lawyer for Davis and founder of the conservative group Liberty Counsel, offered a bit of detail on how the meeting came together, saying the the invitation to meet with Francis was “first conveyed” on Sept. 14, the day that Davis returned to work. 
 
 “Neither Kim Davis nor Liberty Counsel ever said the meeting was an endorsement of her legal case,” Staver said in a statement. “Rather, the meeting was a pastoral meeting to encourage Kim Davis in which Pope Francis thanked her for her courage and told her to ‘Stay strong,’” 
 
 Staver said Vatican security picked up Davis and her husband from their hotel and took them to the Vatican embassy for the meeting last Thursday. 
 
 [Opinion: I’m gay and Catholic and don’t care about Pope-Davis meeting] 
 
 While some religious-freedom advocates applaud Davis’s refusal to adhere to a Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the land, others say Davis — an elected official — could have followed her conscience and U.S. law by stepping aside and allowing others in her office to issue the licenses. 
 
 Some individuals who are close to senior U.S. bishops — who as a group have made the religious freedom campaign their top priority — assert that many bishops didn’t know in advance of the Davis-Francis meeting and were upset about it. Others said the bishops were divided on the Davis case, and some may have been aware of the meeting ahead of time. 
 
 All week, one bishop after another declined to speak on the record about the meeting. Among them were Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Washington archbishop; Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput; and Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. 
 
 Kurtz — the bishop who is based in Kentucky, where the Davis case is unfolding — gave an interview in September that appeared to support her. 
 
 “I believe we as a nation are at our best when we can honor religious liberty,” Kurtz told Louisville television station WHAS-11. “I’d love if legitimately there was a way to let a public official to serve in a way that doesn’t compromise their religious beliefs.” 
 
 Ryan Anderson, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who focuses on religious liberty, said advocates have different perspectives on the legal issues at hand. Some may focus more on faith-based nonprofits, others on individual rights and others on government employees like Davis. There are different opinions and strategies among conservatives worried about the topic, he noted. 
 
 “The big problem we’ve seen with the Kim Davis situation is that these distinctions have been lost,” Anderson said. 
 
 Pope Francis this weekend is launching a major month-long meeting with top bishops on family issues. The meeting — called a synod — is expected to be contentious, as the pope hears various views about how to support and bring closer to the church people who wind up estranged because they have divorced and remarried outside the church or because they are gay. Conservatives are concerned that Francis is about to loosen rules, and some have speculated this week that whoever arranged the Davis meeting might have done so in order to weaken the pope ahead of the synod. 
 
 But Anderson was skeptical about the importance of the Davis meeting to the overall issue of religious freedom. 
 
 “My general sense is that papal visits don’t have a big impact on politics,” he said. “I think politics is driven more by underlying factors, such as interest groups and money — not news.” 
 
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 What’s an Apostolic Christian and why is Kim Davis’s hair so long? 
 
 The first pope to address Congress isn’t new to politics 
 
 Who is the Rev. Carlo Maria Viganò?
– A Vatican official says there is now "a sense of regret" that Pope Francis ever met Kim Davis, reports Reuters—and that could be bad news for the archbishop who set up the meeting. Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican's ambassador to the US, was appointed by Benedict XVI and is known for his hardline stance against same-sex marriage, the Washington Post reports. Vatican officials say Francis wasn't briefed on the Davis case and the meeting "should not be considered a form of support," which has left church insiders wondering whether Vigano deliberately blindsided Francis or merely underestimated just how controversial the meeting would turn out to be, the New York Times reports. A Vatican source tells CBS 2 that Francis was "exploited" by those with their own agendas and the meeting should never have happened. Davis' lawyer, who first announced the meeting, tells the Times that it was set up by Vigano—whom he met at an anti-gay marriage rally in Washington, DC, earlier this year—but they were "led to believe that the invitation did come directly from Pope Francis." The lawyer says the Vatican's description of the meeting as a very brief one among dozens is "absolute nonsense" and "somebody is trying to throw some people under the bus." Bishops are required to ask for permission to resign when they turn 75, and it seems likely that Vigano's will be accepted when he reaches that age in January, the Times notes. (Francis met a gay couple the day before the Davis meeting.)