Pope Francis meets with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Vatican on Saturday. Reuters

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asked Pope Francis to visit India, a significant opening towards the head of the Catholic Church who has long sought an official invitation to the Hindu-majority country.

"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 after meeting Francis at the Vatican.

READ MORE

Prevent mass starving in Afghanistan, UN aid chief urges G20

US, European allies take up Iran nuclear programme in Rome talks

Just ahead of nations descending on Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, with the UK presidency's key objective as keeping the goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach, British High Commissioner Alex Ellis said India, under Prime Modi, is already taking impressive climate action -- quadrupling wind and solar capacity in the last decade.

India has already proved that it has the innovation and political will to follow a sustainable development path. Also India has a huge opportunity to use new tech to pioneer a clean development path, he said.

In an exclusive interview with IANS here just hours before the official start of COP26 with calls for concrete climate action in Glasgow coming from all sectors, the High Commissioner to India said: "We have a packed agenda given that there hasn't been a COP for two years. Our expectations and aims are driven by science."