By Chico Harlan, Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey

ROME — Pope Francis has called in a new documentary for the creation of civil union laws, giving his clearest support to date for the rights of same-sex couples while breaking from the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

“What we have to create is a civil union law,” the pope says in the film, released in Rome on Wednesday. “That way they are legally covered.”

Francis’s comment does nothing to alter Catholic doctrine, but it nonetheless represents a remarkable shift for a church that has fought against LGBT legal rights — with past popes calling same-sex unions inadmissible and deviant. Francis’s statement is also notable within a papacy that on the whole hasn’t been as revolutionary as progressives had hoped and conservatives had feared.

He has long expressed an interest in outreach to the church’s LGBT followers, but his previous remarks as pope have stressed understanding and welcoming rather than substantive policies.

“This is the first time as pope he’s making such a clear statement,” the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit who has advocated for the church to more openly welcome LGBT members, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I think it’s a big step forward. In the past, even civil unions were frowned upon in many quarters of the church. He is putting his weight behind legal recognition of same-sex civil unions.” Read more via Washington Post