Pope Francis’ proposed Papal visit to India that never happened

Pope Francis' visit to India post-2025 in doubt due to health concerns, despite previous invitations and anticipation.

As Pope Francis passed away on April 21, 2025, battling a complex lung infection and complications, his visit to India, which was likely to take place after this year (2025), never materialised.

Although India has more Catholics than Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore combined, there has been no Papal visit in the country since 1999. Around 2017, India seemed on course for a papal visit, but Pope Francis visited the neighboring countries of Bangladesh and Myanmar instead, after an official invitation to India reportedly failed to materialise. 

Pope Francis passes away: LIVE Updates

In the year 2021, Pope Francis had accepted an invitation from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the country. Mr. Modi also renewed the invitation when he met with the pope in June last year (2024), on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy. The Prime minister also took to social media and said, “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.”

Union Minister of state for minority affairs, George Kurian on December last year (2024) said that Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, is likely to visit India after 2025. The visit is set against the backdrop of the Church’s celebrations for the Jubilee Year in 2025.

As per news agency PTI, Mr. Kurian added,”So, as per the information we received, Pope Francis will visit India after the Jubilee Year. We expect that he will be visiting (the country) at the earliest.”

As the papal’s visit to India was long due, the first Pope to visit India was Paul IV, who visited Mumbai in 1964. Pope John Paul II visited India in February 1986 and November 1999. John Paul II, the last Pope to visit India, went to New Delhi in 1999 to issue a papal document on the Church in Asia. It must be noted that the last Indian Prime Minister to meet a Pope was the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who met John Paul II at the Vatican.