VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis beatified Pope Paul VI on Sunday, concluding the remarkable meeting of bishops debating family issues that drew parallels to the tumultuous reforms of the Second Vatican Council overseen and implemented by Pope Paul.

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was on hand for the Mass, which took place just hours after Catholic bishops approved a document charting a more pastoral approach to ministering to Catholic families.

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A tapestry of Pope Paul VI is displayed Sunday on St. Peter’s Basilica during a beatification ceremony and Mass at the closing of a two-week synod on family issues at the Vatican. The Associated Press

They failed to reach consensus on the two most divisive issues at the synod: on welcoming gays and divorced and civilly remarried couples. But the issues remain up for discussion ahead of another meeting of bishops next year.

Although the synod showed deep divisions on hot-button issues, the fact that the questions are on the table is significant given that they had been taboo until Francis’ papacy.

“God is not afraid of new things!” Francis exclaimed in his homily Sunday. “That is why he is continually surprising us, opening our hearts and guiding us in unexpected ways.”

He quoted Pope Paul VI himself as saying the church, particularly the synod of bishops that Paul established, must survey the signs of the times to make sure the church adapts methods to respond to the “growing needs of our time and the changing conditions of society.”

Paul was elected in 1963 to succeed the popular Pope John XXIII, and during his 15-year reign was responsible for implementing the reforms of Vatican II and charting the church through the tumultuous years of the 1960s sexual revolution.

Vatican II opened the way for Mass to be said in local languages instead of in Latin, called for greater involvement of the laity in the life of the church and revolutionized the church’s relations with people of other faiths.

He is perhaps best known, though, for the divisive 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which enshrined the church’s opposition to artificial contraception.

More than 50 years later, Humanae Vitae still elicits criticism for being unrealistic given that the vast majority of Catholics ignore its teaching on birth control. In their final synod document, bishops restated doctrine, but they also said the church must respect couples in their moral evaluation of contraception methods.

The bishops also signaled a muted opening toward gays, saying they should be “welcomed with respect and sensitivity.” That language was far less welcoming than initially proposed, and failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority vote to pass.

“I have the impression many would have preferred a more open, positive language,” Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher wrote on his blog in explaining the apparent protest vote on the gay paragraph. “Not finding it in this paragraph, they might have chosen to indicate their disapproval of it. However, it has also been published, and the reflection will have to continue.”

Sunday’s beatification marked the third 20th-century pope that Francis has elevated this year: In April, he canonized Sts. John Paul II and John XXIII.

Paul was beatified, the first step toward possible sainthood, after the Vatican certified a miracle attributed to his intercession concerning a California boy whom doctors had said would be born with serious birth defects. The boy, whose identity has been kept secret at his parents’ request, is now a healthy teen.

A second miracle needs to be certified by the Vatican for Paul to be canonized.

The Vatican said 70,000 people attended Sunday’s Mass, far fewer than the 800,000 people who attended the dual canonization earlier this year. Paul is often called the “forgotten” or “misunderstood” pope, caught between the “good pope” John XXIII and the crowd-pleasing, globe-trotting John Paul.

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