India's Prime Minister Modi invites Pope Francis to visit

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Pope Francis on Saturday and invited him to visit, in a turnaround in relations with the Vatican following the failure of negotiations for a papal trip to the predominantly Hindu nation in 2017.

"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 said on Twitter.

A Vatican statement gave no details of the meeting between Francis and Modi, who is in Rome to attend the G20 summit of the world's richest countries.

There are about 20 million Roman Catholics in India, about 1.5% of the population of 1.3 billion. Some 80% of India's people are Hindu, according to UCA News, which specialises in the Catholic Church in Asia.

In 2016, Francis said he was "almost sure" of visiting India the following year along with Bangladesh. But Indian Catholic Church leaders failed to convince Modi, who heads a nationalist administration, to invite him.

The Church officials said at the time that the government had cited scheduling problems for the prime minister, and Francis visited Myanmar and Bangladesh instead.

The last pope to visit India was John Paul II, who went to New Delhi in 1999 to issue a papal document on the Church in Asia.