Pope Francis has said that Catholics who are homosexual, confused about their sexuality or convinced they were born in the wrong body deserve the same attentive pastoral care as anyone else.

Flying back to Rome after visiting Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Pope was asked, given his earlier criticism of “gender theory” and “ideological colonisation”, how he would provide pastoral care to a person who felt his sexuality did not correspond to his or her biology.

Francis said that as a priest, a bishop and even as Pope he had “accompanied people with homosexual tendencies and even homosexual activity. I accompanied them; I helped them draw closer to the Lord, although some couldn’t. But I never abandoned them.