“Who am I to judge?”

Pope Francis uttered those words in July 2013, just four and a half months into his papacy, when he was asked about gay priests, and the remark was greeted by some observers as a revelation and revolution. At long last, the Roman Catholic Church’s formal disapproval and hypocritical denunciations of gay men and lesbians might be coming to a close.

But it wasn’t that simple. The church’s dealings with gay people are never that simple. They’re an infuriating paradox of blessings and shaming, grace and cruelty, provisionally opened arms and persistently closed doors. And Francis, more than any of the popes before him, became the mouthpiece of that muddle.

To wit: He later decided that he was one to judge, and last year, in a closed-door meeting with Catholic bishops, he reportedly responded to a question about whether gay men should be admitted into seminaries by saying that such training grounds for future priests were already lousy with “frociaggine,” a homophobic slur.

But then, instead of denying news accounts of that insult, he took the extraordinary step of apologizing for it.

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During his 12 years as the church’s official leader, Francis nudged — no, yanked — the church toward a more modern perspective and greater acceptance of gay people. There’s no debating that. His efforts along those lines complemented his image as a refreshing counterpoint to Pope Benedict, the stern moralist (“God’s Rottweiler” was a popular nickname for him) whose resignation preceded Francis’ election. Francis was the pope less bound by ancient dogma. The pope more in touch with contemporary mores. The warm, affable pope. God’s Labradoodle.

And that demeanor extended to many statements and stands that exhorted Catholics to regard and respect gay and lesbian people as cherished members of the flock. But for every advance, there was an asterisk, and for every proclamation of love, a delineation of limits, so that Francis — who died on Monday at the age of 88 — personified the indelible tension in the church’s official teaching about homosexuality, which he never squarely renounced. That teaching holds that being gay isn’t a sin but that acting on those feelings is “intrinsically disordered.”