Poland's Catholic bishops spent 90 minutes meeting Pope Francis yesterday, but the meeting was private so people could speak freely.

"The Holy Father acts on the principle that general issues are difficult to settle in every individual case, and in every country and continent," Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, president of the Polish bishops' conference, told media.

"This is why he speaks about decentralisation, so that a bishops' conference in a particular country can formulate its own perspective, not only in how it applies papal directives, but also in finding the right solutions in its own situation."