By Matters India Reporter
Vatican City, Oct 30, 2021: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 30 invited Pope Francis to India.
The Indian premier, who is in Italy to attend the G-20 summit, extended the invitation during his a one-on-one meeting with the Pope in Vatican City.
“Had a very warm meeting with Pope Francis. I had the opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues with him and also invited him to visit India,” the prime minister tweeted from his personal account.
The Vatican’s official statement said Modi’s visit with the Vatican’s secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin was brief and that “the cordial relations between the Holy See and India were discussed.”
The Press Trust of India news agency reported that the meeting was scheduled for 20 minutes but lasted an hour.
The prime minister was accompanied by India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar.
The two leaders reportedly discussed the need to arrest climate change and remove poverty to make the planet better place to live.
The pictures of Modi and the Pope hugging each other have gone viral on social media platforms.
A day earlier, India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had told the press that the prime minister’s talks with the Pope had no set agenda. “I believe tradition is not to have an agenda when you discuss issues with His Holiness. And I think we respect that. I’m sure the issues that will be covered would cover a range of areas of interests in terms of the general global perspectives and issues that are important to all of us,” Shringla added.
In Rome Modi on October 29 interacted with people of various communities, including Indians c and friends of India from different organizations.
The prime minister also paid floral tributes at the bust of Mahatma Gandhi in Rome.
Pope Francis had hoped to visit India and Bangladesh in 2017. After negotiations with the Indian government dragged on, the Pope went instead to Bangladesh and Myanmar.
It is the first-ever one-to-one meeting between Prime Minister Modi and Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church.
Modi, a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is the first Indian Prime Minister Pope Francis has met since becoming Pope on March 13, 2013.
The last Pope to visit India was Pope John Paul II came to New Delhi to promulgate the 140-page Asian Synod Document, “Ecclesia in Asia” (Church in Asia), at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on November 6. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also of the BJP, was the then prime minister.
The Asian Synod was the special assembly of the bishops of Asia at the Vatican April 19 to May 14, 1998.
John Paul II, who is now a saint, had earlier visited India February 1-10, 1986. During the “Apostolic Pilgrimage to India,” the Pope traveled around 20,000 kilometers to 14 cities across India.
Pope Paul VI was the first leader of the Catholic Church to visit India when he came to Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1964 to attend the International Eucharistic Congress.