A "shadow council" held a closed-door meeting at the Vatican last Monday to consider contentious issues such as support for gay unions and Communion for the divorced and remarried while the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops was meeting Pope Francis.

A private group of bishops and experts discussed such issues separately from the meeting of the ordinary council, held on May 25 to 26. The council has been preparing for October's synod on "the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in contemporary society," the Catholic News Agency reported on Tuesday.

The council examined the synod's "instrumentum laboris," or "working document," and combined it with answers to questions distributed worldwide to dioceses.

"An extensive and detailed study of the text has generated proposals and contributions for its integration and improvement," said the Vatican Information Service.

The agency also said that the working document's final text will be translated by the Secretariat General in the next few weeks.

Changes to the Synod's modus operandi were also considered. Its secretary general, Cardinal Baldisseri, changed the working rules.

Before his appointment in September 2013, the Synod gave summaries of each scheduled intervention in many languages. Under Cardinal Baldisseri, only a brief summary was provided daily by Holy See press officer Father Federico Lombardi.

Amid criticism that changes adversely affected the Synod's transparency, the Cardinal maintained that "information is provided by a verbal summary" and is transparent.

He also said that Synod fathers were "not forbidden to speak to the press" but they are banned from publishing their interventions, as any synod text "is property of the synod."

The difficulty of seeing the extent of the Synod's discussion led to media speculation.

A similar setup may be seen in this autumn's Synod, as a "shadow council" convened behind closed doors while the ordinary council met with the Catholic Church's highest leader.

The discussion, held in the conference center of the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University which did not manage the meeting itself, had a select audience of 50 who listened to bishops and theologians.

The conference, called the "Mutual Convention of the French, German and Swiss Bishops Conferences concerning the issues of the pastoral care of marriage and family at the eve of the Synod of Bishops," involved not all bishops interested in the matter, and there were even some who were not informed about the meeting.

One unnamed source told the Catholic News Agency that "the tune was that of a pastoral opening on issues such as communion for the divorced and remarried, and the pastoral care of homosexuals."

One speaker declined to comment on the purpose of the conference or even the tone of the meeting, saying "it is unfortunately forbidden to us by the organizers to give any interview or explanation about yesterday's conference."

The meeting's speakers include: Bishop Jean-Marie Lovey of Sion, Bishop Jean-Luc Brunin of Le Havre, theologian Eva Maria Faber, 2014 Ratzinger Prize for Theology winner Anne-Marie Pelletier, pastoral theology professor Father François Xavier Amherdt, moral theology professor Eberhard Schockenhoff, and theologian Alain Thomasset.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising gave the final remarks.