Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is set to become India’s first head of a provincial government to meet the Pope of Rome and Head of Catholic Church in Vatican City. He is scheduled to meet Pope Francis during his short trip to Italy. He will depart for Rome at 4.15 pm on June 20, an official release said on Saturday.
“During his stay in Rome, Chief Minister Patnaik will meet the Pope in the Holy See, Vatican,” a release issued by the chief minister’s office informed. Odisha Bytes was the first to report about this meeting on June 6.
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Naveen’s scheduled meeting with the Pope is bound to raise eyebrows, especially in political circles, ahead of the upcoming presidential elections as the Centre had earlier denied permission to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to attend a World Peace Conference in Rome, which had Pope Francis among others in attendance, on October 6 and 7, 2021. The Centre had then said that the “event is not commensurate in status for participation by the chief minister of a state”.
Sources said that the Centre cleared Naveen’s trip without much ado as the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) may need the support of his party, the BJD, in the Presidential election scheduled for July 18.
Naveen’s meeting with Pope is expected to grab international eyeballs and is aimed at pushing the five-time CM’s political stature by a few notches higher.
Notably, the CM had to cut short his trip to the United Kingdom in 2012 amid an alleged aborted coup attempt by then Rajya Sabha member Pyarimohan Mohapatra.
This is his second foreign trip as Chief Minister of Odisha after a gap of almost 10 years and he will be leading a delegation, which includes Chief Secretary Suresh Mohapatra, Secretary to CM (5T) V K Pandian, Principal Secretary Food and Civil Supplies V V Yadav, Principal Secretary Industries Hemant Sharma, Resident Commissioner in New Delhi Ravi Kant, to Rome and Dubai.
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He will also be attending the Investors’ Meet in Dubai on June 29.
