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Some 200 bishops from around the world are gathered at the Vatican for a two-week assembly to discuss issues related to the family, including artificial contraception, premarital sex and ministering gay unions.

But one of the most controversial is a proposal to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion — taboo in church doctrine for 2,000 years.

In February, Pope Francis tapped one of his favorite theologians, German Cardinal Walter Kasper, to address a meeting of all the cardinals.

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Pope Francis leads a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Francis leads a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Kasper argued that the church must show more mercy to people whose first marriages have failed and who want to remain within the church.

"With respect to the divorced and the remarried people, the church does not give them absolution, [does] not give them Holy Communion. And many people say this is not the God of Jesus, because Jesus was very merciful — he forgives us — and the church does not," he said.

Kasper spoke to NPR after his address. He said it provoked sharp exchanges among some of the cardinals.

"Of course there was a heated debate, but there were not only cardinals who were against it, there were also cardinals who were in favor," he said. "And so the voices are divided. The pope himself was very grateful for the discourse."

Many Catholic conservatives rejected Kasper's proposals. On the eve of the current gathering of bishops, known as a synod, five cardinals published a book of essays, "Remaining in the Truth of Christ." In them, they described Kasper's permissive attitude toward Communion as "fundamentally flawed."

One of the authors is American Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican's top court. In an interview with Catholic News Service, he dismissed the viability of Kasper's proposal.

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"I cannot see how it can go forward if we are going to honor the words of our Lord himself, through which he said, 'the man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery,' " Burke said.

Catholic doctrine stipulates that a second marriage without the complex and often lengthy annulment of the first amounts to adultery, and that anyone married in a civil ceremony is living in sin and therefore ineligible to receive the sacraments.

But Kasper says there is no such single category as "the divorced and remarried." For example, he says, a woman who is abandoned by her husband is different from the man who abandoned his wife.

"So we have to distinguish the cases," he says.

Kasper also raises the idea of penitence.

"The other question is, how a person who confesses, has made a mistake and so on, and repents his sins, why he cannot be absolved and permitted to go to Holy Communion." Kasper says. "There is a discussion going on in the church, a discussion for and against this proposal, the synod together with the pope, who has to decide the whole question."

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Faithful hold candles during a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Faithful hold candles during a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

But Burke, the American cardinal, hopes the synod fathers will drop the issue altogether.

"These are bishops, these are shepherds of the flock, who are Catholic," he says, "and I can't imagine them accepting this proposal — I don't know quite how I would be able to digest it."

Pope Francis was asked last year about a possible change in church teaching on divorced and remarried Catholics. His reply? "I believe that this is the season of mercy."

Several participants in the synod have raised the possibility of a simplified annulment process, suggesting that many Catholic couples enter marriage unaware of the required commitments, making the union invalid from the start.

The synod has another week and a half to run. No decisions are expected until a second synod on the family next year, and it's not clear where the majority of bishops stand on the Communion and divorce issue.

Pope Francis

Roman Catholic Church

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Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET

Hospital officials in Spain are saying that the condition of a nurse quarantined with Ebola has worsened.

Yolanda Fuentes, an official at the Carlos III hospital in Madrid, says of Ebola patient Teresa Romero Ramos: "Her clinical situation has deteriorated but I can't give any more information due to the express wishes of the patient."

Romero, 44, was admitted to the hospital earlier this week. She apparently became infected through contact with a contaminated glove she was using in the treatment of an Ebola patient, who later died.

The latest news comes a day after the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, a 42-year-old Liberian man who was being treated for the disease in Dallas. It also follows an announcement from Washington that screening of passengers arriving from West Africa at five major U.S. airports would be stepped up.

As we reported Wednesday, new screening measures for the disease will go into effect at JFK in New York, Newark, Chicago's O'Hare airport, Washington Dulles and Atlanta's Hartsfield airport. The White House says 94 percent of all travelers arriving in the U.S. from the worst Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea arrive via those five airports.

Reuters says: "The new airport screening will begin on Saturday at New York's JFK International Airport and then expand to Dulles and the international airports in Atlanta, Chicago and Newark."

The Associated Press reports that airplane cabin cleaners working for Air Serv Corp. at LaGuardia began a 24-hour strike Wednesday night to protest their lack of protective equipment to deal with blood and vomit from potentially infected passengers.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, says screeners will use no-touch thermometers to take the temperatures of passengers.

Canada said Thursday it plans to use targeted temperature screening to prevent the disease from crossing its borders.

"Quarantine officers have the necessary training and equipment, including temperature monitoring devices, to conduct a health assessment and determine whether additional health measures are required," Dr. Gregory Taylor, the head of Canada's Public Health Agency, said in a statement.

Also today, the U.S. military says it is ramping up its aid efforts in Liberia.

"Two different flights of MV-22 Osprey and KC-130 aircraft, along with U.S. Marines, will arrive to support the whole-of-government effort to contain Ebola," U.S. Army Capt. R. Carter Langston told The Associated Press in an email.

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Liberia

Spain

Hong Kong government officials have canceled talks with student leaders, saying it is "impossible to have a constructive dialogue" because the pro-democracy activists had called for stepped-up protests if officials failed to make concessions.

Although mass demonstrations that shut down parts of Hong Kong last week have dwindled, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam reiterated her government's demand that the protests must end.

"The dialogue cannot be deployed as an excuse to incite more people to join the protest," Lam said. "The illegal occupation activists must stop."

Lam said the talks could not go ahead as planned because they'd been "seriously undermined" by the student activists.

The students have called for Beijing to fulfill a promise to have an open election to replace Hong Kong's chief executive in 2017. The commitment was outlined in the agreement between London and Beijing on the handover of the longtime British colony 17 years ago. They had also demanded that the territory's current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, step down.

The Associated Press notes: "Her announcement came hours after student leaders called for supporters to redouble their efforts to occupy the main protest zone — a highway outside government headquarters that they're now dubbing 'Umbrella Square.' "

While skeptical of real progress, student activists cited the prospect of talks with the government as one of the reasons they'd toned down their protests.

Today, some expressed frustration and anger.

"Two days ago they wanted to talk, now they won't talk," Candice Heung, a university administrator who has participated in the protests, tells AP.

Student leader Alex Chow called on people to continue to occupy the city to call for greater freedoms, according to Reuters.

Earlier, the talks had been agreed to but then quickly called off by the students after violence perpetrated by people the pro-democracy forces said were government-sponsored thugs.

Also on Thursday, Hong Kong's Department of Justice gave permission to the prosecution office to begin an investigation into Chief Executive Leung for a $6.4 million payment he got from an Australian engineering company while he was in office, Reuters reports.

Hong Kong protests

China

He liked to joke around with his neighbors. And he always gave them a helping hand. The neighbors that Thomas Eric Duncan's generous spirit is what cost him his life.

Duncan, 42, was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States and the first to die of the disease on American soil. He likely contracted the disease in Liberia when he carried a pregnant woman, sick with Ebola, into her house after no clinic would admit her.

That was just before Sept. 19, when Duncan flew from Monrovia to Dallas with stopovers in Brussels and Washington, D.C. He was traveling to Texas to visit his fiancee and son. His relatives insist he didn't know he'd been exposed to Ebola when he boarded that fateful flight to the United States.

In East Monrovia, where Duncan rented a room, he was known as "Eric." And he was well-liked by his neighbors.

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Irene Seyou (right) poses on the front porch of her former next-door neighbor, Thomas Eric Duncan. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Irene Seyou (right) poses on the front porch of her former next-door neighbor, Thomas Eric Duncan.

John W. Poole/NPR

"Eric is a nice man," says 31-year-old Irene Seyou, who lived next door. "He ain't got a problem with nobody."

She saw him carry the landlord's pregnant daughter into her house just days before he left for the United States. The girl was bleeding profusely from her mouth and could no longer walk, says Seyou.

"Eric helped the family," she says. "He carried her inside."

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Duncan rented a room in this home, owned by the family of Marthalene Williams, the pregnant woman who died of Ebola. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption John W. Poole/NPR

Duncan rented a room in this home, owned by the family of Marthalene Williams, the pregnant woman who died of Ebola.

John W. Poole/NPR

The pregnant woman died of Ebola the next day. Three other members of her family died from the disease soon after. Yesterday the girl's father was lying on the porch of the house, barely able to lift himself from a mat, his eyes bloodshot in what Ebola doctors refer to as "black and red." Sweat glistened across his cheeks.

Duncan did not know he'd been exposed to Ebola by the pregnant woman, says his brother-in-law, John Lewis.

"The family said that the girl did not die from Ebola; they continued to say it until they went and buried this girl," says Lewis.

Around the corner from where he lived, Duncan's family runs a small restaurant and shop where he often used to eat. As word spread that Duncan had died, neighbors gathered in flimsy plastic chairs outside the shop to console each other.

Some of the mourners were angry. A young man blasted the Liberian government for threatening to prosecute Duncan for checking "No" on an exit form about whether he'd had any exposure to Ebola.

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"Instead of praying that this guy did not die from this disease, and they are saying they'll prosecute him. I'm disappointed in the government," he said.

This man, one of Duncan's neighbors, didn't want his name used out of fear that the government will, in his words, "hunt him" down for his comments.

He's equally critical of the U.S. government, asking why the American citizens treated for Ebola in the U.S. have survived but the one Liberian treated there did not.

"Why is that they couldn't save the brother's life?" he asks. "Why is that they didn't save Eric?"

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