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Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday requested Pope Francis to go to India, a major opening in the direction of the top of the Catholic Church who has lengthy sought an official invitation to the Hindu-majority nation.
Modi, 71, invited Francis throughout a gathering on the Vatican on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome.
“Had a really heat assembly with Pope Francis. I had the chance to debate a variety of points with him and in addition invited him to go to India,” Modi stated on Twitter after the talks.
Pope Francis and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on the Vatican for a lot longer than the 20 minutes scheduled. Picture/Handout VATICAN MEDIA/AFP
The pope, 84, has been on file saying that he needs to go to India. The Vatican had even drafted a schedule for a papal journey a number of years in the past, in line with spiritual information web site Crux.
“Thanks very a lot in your go to. I’m joyful, I’m very joyful,” a smiling Francis stated as he grasped Modi’s hand on the finish of the go to, in line with footage launched by the Vatican.
Modi replied: “I wish to see you in India.”
Francis, chief of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, is hoping to push the defence of non secular freedom on the planet’s second most populous nation.
Activists say that spiritual minorities in India have confronted elevated ranges of discrimination and violence since Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) got here to energy in 2014.
Whereas Muslims, who make up round 14 % of the inhabitants, have borne the brunt, Christians, who account for simply over two %, have additionally suffered an increase in reported violent assaults.
The final papal go to to India was made by Pope John Paul II in 1999.
– ‘Cordial’ -Saturday’s Vatican go to was Francis and Modi’s first assembly. A senior official within the prime minister’s workplace informed AFP the “very heat” talks — scheduled to final 20 minutes — went on for practically an hour.
In an unusually quick observe, the Vatican described it as “a quick dialog” through which “the cordial relations between the Holy See and India have been mentioned”.
Modi’s workplace stated the leaders mentioned “combating local weather change and eradicating poverty”. There was no point out of the red-button challenge of non secular freedom.
Below the pretext that Christians are searching for forcibly to transform Hindus, greater than 300 violent incidents have been recorded this yr, in line with a report by a gaggle of NGOs launched this month.
This included a reported assault on a prayer home by round 200 members of the BJP and Hindu teams within the northern state of Uttarakhand in early October.
The native head of the BJP stated the prayer home held “suspicious gatherings”.
No less than three states run by the BJP have handed laws aimed toward stopping “pressured conversion” and dozens of individuals have been arrested.
Others plan to comply with swimsuit together with Karnataka, the place monks have come out in protest.
In 2020, the US Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom listed India as a “nation of explicit concern” for the primary time since 2004.
Modi’s authorities denies having a Hindu agenda and insists that individuals of all religions have equal rights.
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