It has now emerged that Pope Francis met briefly with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who would not hand out marriage licences to same-sex couples because of her conscientious objection to same-sex marriage. He also met with the Little Sisters of the Poor who have also been involved in a religious freedom battle of their own. In doing so he has lent them a little bit of his very considerable moral authority.

Davis has become extremely controversial because of her stance and has found herself thoroughly demonised. Her case raises substantive questions; for example, should a public employee be required to carry out State policy no matter what that is, no matter how it has changed since his or her employment, or should there be some allowance for conscience opt-outs?

The case of the Little Sisters of the Poor is more straight-forward. All employers in the United States – bar Church and Church-run ministries – that have health insurance schemes are required to include in their schemes cover for items like contraception and abortion-inducing drugs regardless of their beliefs.

The Sisters do not enjoy the exemption because their hospitals are not considered to be simply church-run ministries by the Obama Administration. This is because their hospitals serve all people and offering health-care is not purely ‘religious’.

As a result they are currently embroiled in a legal battle to defend their right not to cooperate with something that goes against their beliefs.

The reason, by the way, that their case is more straight-forward, on paper at least, than the Davis one is that they are not State employees and their stance does not involve refusing a service to any named individual.

In any event, the fact that the Pope met both Davis and the Sisters, no matter how low-key the meetings, is highly significant as religious analyst John Allen spells out in more detail in this article.

(Here is another, more combative look at the same issue by Michael Brendan Dougherty