In a documentary that debuted in Rome on Wednesday, Pope Francis calls for civil union laws for same-sex couples.

The pope made the comments in Franceso, a documentary about his life and ministry. The Catholic News Agency reports that "The film chronicles the approach of Pope Francis to pressing social issues, and to pastoral ministry among those who live, in the words of the pontiff, 'on the existential peripheries.'"

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family," the Pope says in a section of the film dealing with pastoral care for those who identify as LGBT. "Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it."

The pope then went on to say, "What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that," he says, referring to his time as a Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

However, some have suggested that the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio supported civil unions only as a means to prevent approval of full-out same-sex marriage in Argentina.

New Ways Ministry, a Catholic LGBT organization, says "We gratefully welcome Pope Francis' latest support for same-gender civil unions, but we urge the pope to apply the same kind of reasoning to recognize these same unions of love and support within the Catholic Church, too."

The Vatican is officially opposed to same-sex relationships, including civil unions. “Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity," a 2003 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says. "The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself."

The Pope and the Vatican both have yet to make any public statements following the movie's premiere.