Following days of commentary about this story, Father Federico Lombardi, the head of the Holy See Press Office, finally issued an official statement about Kim Davis' meeting with the Pope:
Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the Pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.
The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.In other words, Kim Davis and her legal team exaggerated the significance of this meeting and milked it in the media for all it was worth.
CBS News reports that the Vatican was "blindsided" by this story, and with the meeting:
A highly placed source inside the Vatican claims the Pope was blindsided. As Pope Francis was addressing a joint session of Congress, then thousands more gathered outside on the west lawn, Kim Davis, who’d become the poster child for opponents of same-sex marriage, was getting ready for a meeting with him at the Vatican embassy. It is a meeting some charge was orchestrated by the man who lived there, the Pope’s representative here, Carlo Maria Vigano. Not even the Papal Spokesman Federico Lombardi knew about it ahead of time. Nor did the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which would have opposed it. Others claim the Pope knew about the meeting and had ordered Vatican diplomats, perhaps even Vigano, to set it up. CBS 2’s Vatican source doesn’t think so. A close advisor to Pope Francis tweeted that the Pope was, in his words, “exploited” by those who set up what the CBS 2 source says was a “meeting that never should have taken place.” Some call it an attempt by highly placed church leaders in the U.S. to diminish the impact of the Pope’s visit.I'm still annoyed by ABC New and Paula Faris for her multiple puffball interviews over the past couple weeks. She's allowed herself to be used by Davis and Liberty Counsel into lengthy sympathetic interviews with no real push back against her exaggerations. She was the ABC News personality that exclusively reported on Davis' meeting with Pope Francis. Once again (such as when Davis told us that she has gay friends), Faris remained superficial and didn't actually investigate the veracity of Davis' story.