The papal utterance has thrown the Catholic world into bewilderment and confusion. But Bergoglio is not worried about this. For him questions of doctrine or morals or spirituality are useful only instrumentally, in service of an objective that is always only and totally political.
Every normal-thinking person understands the expression that the Pope uses here as a form of a cohabitation legally recognized by the state, as a stable cohabitation ('Convivencia') of a homosexual couple, and thus as a legal recognition of the homosexual lifestyle.