Pope Francis softened the Catholic Church's approach to two classes of "sinners" Friday, saying cohabiting couples should be "welcomed and guided" while remarried divorced people should not be cast out into the cold.

Couples who live together outside of marriage "need to be welcomed and guided, patiently and discreetly", the pontiff said in new guidelines on the Church's approach to the family, while those who have divorced and remarried "are not excommunicated and they should not be treated as such".