Narenda Modi invites Pope Francis to visit India at ‘very warm’ Vatican meeting

Narendra Modi said on Saturday that he invited Pope Francis to visit India during a “very warm” meeting at the Vatican.

The Indian Prime Minister made the announcement on his Twitter account on Oct. 30, following a 55-minute meeting with the pope. The two men had been scheduled to speak for half an hour.

Modi wrote: “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.

Modi, the leader of the world’s largest democracy, is in Rome to attend a G20 summit taking place on Oct. 30-31.

The Holy See press office said that after his papal audience, Modi met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States, or “foreign minister.”

“During a brief conversation, the cordial relations between the Holy See and India were discussed,” it said.

During the customary exchange of gifts, the pope gave Modi a circular bronze casting illustrating the biblical verse “The wilderness will become a fruitful field” (Isaiah 32:15).

The prime minister gave the pope a candle stand made from pure silver, as well as a book outlining India’s commitment to tackling climate change.

Modi, 71, a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was elected prime minister in 2014 and reelected in a landslide in 2019.

He is the first Indian prime minister to visit the pope at the Vatican since June 2000, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee met with John Paul II during an official visit to Italy.

India and the Holy See established diplomatic relations shortly after India gained independence from Britain in 1948.

Paul VI became the first pope to visit India in 1964, when he attended the International Eucharistic Congress in Mumbai.

The last pope to travel to the country was John Paul II, who visited New Delhi in 1999.

Pope Francis had expressed hope that he would visit India as a part of his 2017 to South Asia trip to Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar).

Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, reported at the time that Indian Catholic leaders had been in touch with Modi’s government about a papal visit, but that “they were not able to obtain a commitment.”