Speaking on the plane home after a visit to Georgia (below), Pope Francis said that Jesus would always welcome and walk with gay and transgender people.
He also denounced gender theory, which can include the ideas that gender is significantly determined by environment and that one has the right to choose their own gender.
According to Reuters, he said: "When a person (who is gay) arrives before Jesus, Jesus certainly will not say, 'Go away because you are homosexual'.
"Life is life, and things should be taken as they come. Sin is sin, but tendencies or hormonal imbalances ... can cause many problems and we have to be careful.
"But each case must be welcomed, accompanied, studied, discerned and integrated. This is what Jesus would do today."
Pope Francis has ministered to gay and transgender people before as a priest, bishop and pontiff.
He told the audience he knew a Spanish woman who had a sex change and became a man, before marrying a woman.
The pontiff invited the transgender man and his wife to the Vatican to speak with them, and denounced a priest who said they would "go to hell" because of what they'd done.
While in Georgia, Pope Francis also addressed what he called a "global war" on marriage.
He told the plane audience: "It is one thing for a person to have this tendency, this option, and even change sex.
"But it is another thing to teach it, gender theory, in schools along these lines in order to change mentality. I call this ideological colonization."
