The document also acknowledged the church’s shortcomings amid new revelations on clerics’ sexual abuse of minors, a continuing global scandal that has damaged the church’s credibility in recent years and that risks undermining attempts to engage younger generations.

The Synod of Bishops, as the assembly is known, “recognizes that dealing with the question of abuse, in all its aspects, with the precious help of young people, can really be an opportunity for an epochal reform,” the document said.

It praised those who had called out their abusers, and admitted that many past cases had been badly handled. Several of the participants said throughout the three-week gathering that the abuse issue had weighed on the discussions.

But some said a more appropriate venue for discussing the topic would be a meeting at the Vatican that Francis has called for February with the presidents of more than 130 bishops’ conferences.

Many had hoped for more from the document.

“It’s kind of the same old stuff,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group for gay Catholics, who said the Vatican would have had a better understanding of the complexities of the issue had one of the 34 young lay auditors at the synod been gay.