PHILADELPHIA—During his landmark six-day visit to the U.S., Pope Francis used a soft sell to convey a conciliatory message on divisive topics such as immigration, climate change and inequality, setting aside the fiery rhetoric that had polarized the U.S. faithful, church leaders and politicians before his arrival.

The pope largely glossed over divisive issues that have earned him passionate fans and opponents, staying instead on safer ground as he preached a message of dialogue to a deeply divided country. As a result, he deprived both liberals and conservatives of sound bites they might have employed to advance their respective agendas after his departure.

“He helped us to see that this polarization that exists in our society, certainly among our politicians and even within the church, this isn’t the way we ought to be,” said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson. “He’s calling our country’s politicians and bishops to a higher role.”

Before his arrival, the pope’s strong language on capitalism, social justice and climate change had made him a sharply divisive figure in the U.S. Liberals championed his full-throated defense of the environment and denunciation of economic inequality, while conservatives blasted his harsh rhetoric on the free-market system and lamented his softer approach to moral issues such as divorce.

As recently as a July meeting of antiglobalization activists in Bolivia, hosted by the country’s left-wing President Evo Morales, the pope blamed many of the world’s ills on “corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ that always tighten the belt of workers and the poor.” He described money as “the dung of the devil.”

But he left that language behind on his arrival in the U.S., making remarkably little reference to capitalism except to laud the “spirit of enterprise.”

In his speech before Congress, he spoke in uplifting terms about progress in poverty reduction and the potential for technology to curb man-made harm to the environment. He didn’t repeat his call in his June encyclical on the environment to combat global warming by reducing use of fossil fuels.

The pope, who stopped in Cuba before his U.S. visit, didn’t repeat his appeal to lift the economic embargo on the country, a point of deep division in Washington and beyond.

The pope’s references to immigration consisted of homespun appeals to the immigrant experience—including his own, as the son of an Italian who moved to Argentina—urging his audience to identify with the hopes of Latin American migrants coming north in search of a better life and asking: “Is this not what we want for our own children?” Those comments stood in contrast to his denunciation of Europe’s indifference to the plight of migrants seeking desperately to reach the continent, sometimes dying in the attempt.

Even when appealing to the liberal agenda, he was subtle. In the congressional address he paid tribute to American heroes including Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. But he also celebrated Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and Thomas Merton, a poet and Cistercian monk who championed interreligious dialogue and nuclear disarmament.

He trod lightly over highly sensitive ethical questions such as same-sex marriage, abortion and divorce—areas where his more conciliatory approach has alarmed conservatives.

In a speech to U.S. bishops at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, he acknowledged a “battle between light and darkness being fought in the world,” but warned against the “temptation to give in to fear, to lick one’s wounds, to think back on bygone times and to devise harsh responses to fierce opposition.”

“Harsh and divisive language does not befit the tongue of a pastor, it has no place in his heart,” the pope told the bishops.

That was a clear call for the American bishops to shift away from their typical approach under St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, who encouraged a more confrontational attitude on the most widely contested church teachings on marriage and sexual and medical ethics.

The pope did send the bishops important signals of support in their long struggle with the Obama administration over the contraception mandate in the health law, and in looming conflicts over whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling recognizing a right to same-sex marriage will require Catholic institutions to hire or extend employee benefits to same-sex spouses.

The pope used his first speech on U.S. soil, delivered to President Barack Obama at the White House, to warn Americans to “preserve and defend [religious] freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.” The next day, he paid a surprise visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose demands for a “conscience” exemption to the contraception mandate have made them heroines in the bishops’ religious-freedom campaign. The Vatican spokesman later underscored that the pope had intended his visit to the nuns as a show of support for those demands.

“His messages on religious freedom have been very, very welcome,” said Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ conference’s committee on religious freedom. “That’s going to help because his witness to faith is so credible and people are so open to what he has to say.”

The pope’s soft-sell approach didn’t please everyone. Liberals likely felt disappointed that the superstar pope didn’t do more to humble Republicans in Congress. And conservatives took to social media to bemoan his scant and muted references to abortion.

When asked why the pope didn’t issue stronger statements against same-sex marriage, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope “avoided particular polemics or discussion because he comes [with] a positive message.”

Meanwhile, the pope’s major opportunity to address ordinary Americans—a prime-time telecast at a celebration of the family Saturday evening—gave him the chance to put forth a passionate defense of the traditional family as a monogamous union of a man and a woman.

Viewers saw him listening patiently as families recounted, often with unconcealed emotion, their struggles and concerns, at times touching on controversial questions such as contraception and same-sex marriage.

But when the pope finally spoke, he entirely ignored those topics. He threw away prepared remarks and gave the most relaxed address of the visit, mixing in jokes about mothers-in-law and advice to married couples. “Families have difficulties, families quarrel, and sometimes plates can fly,” he said. “But the family is like a factory of hope.”