G7 Summit: PM Modi meets Pope Francis, invites him to India

Hindustan Times - Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday met Pope Francis on the sidelines of G7 summit in Italy's Apulia.

“Met Pope Francis on the sidelines of the @G7 Summit. I admire his commitment to serve people and make our planet better. Also invited him to visit India. @Pontifex,” the prime minister posted on social platform X.

Modi had met Pope Francis in 2021 at the Vatican, wherein both of them had discussed wide range of issues including the Covid-19 outbreak. He was the first prime minister to meet the incumbent pontiff who became the head of the Catholic Church in 2013.

It was also the first meeting between an Indian prime minister and a pope since June 2000, when late Atal Bihari Vajpayee had visited the Vatican and met Pope John Paul II.

During his address at the G7 summit, Pope Francis challenged leaders of the world’s wealthy democracies to keep human dignity foremost in developing and using artificial intelligence, warning that such powerful technology risks turning human relations themselves into mere algorithms.

“We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines,” AP quoted the pope as saying.

“No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being,” he added.

“It is up to everyone to make good use of (AI) but the onus is on politics to create the conditions for such good use to be possible and fruitful," the pope said.

Prime Minister Modi held bilateral meetings with UK counterpart Rishi Sunak, French president Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.

The G7 summit is taking place at the luxurious Borgo Egnazia resort in Italy's Apulia region from June 13-15. PM Modi is attending the summit at the invitation of Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. It is Modi's foreign visit in his third term as prime minister.