India's leaders join Catholics in mourning

NEW DELHI, Sunday (AFP) - India's president and prime minister joined Catholics across the country Sunday in expressing sorrow over the death of Pope John Paul II. President Abdul Kalam said he was "deeply saddened at the passing away of Pope John Paul II," the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.

"The world has lost a church leader and a statesman who throughout his life worked for human dignity and freedom and for the needy and oppressed. He tirelessly worked for peace on this planet and to establish an international order based on equality and justice.

"The government and the people of India join me in paying tribute to the departed soul."

The 84-year-old spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church's 1.1 billion members passed away Saturday evening in Rome.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday described the pontiff as a "people's Pope" who especially endeared himself to Indians when he initiated the process of granting sainthood to Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, who founded the Calcutta-based Missionaries of Charity that cared for the sick and poor in the eastern Indian city.

She died in 1997 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 19, 2003 in one of the fastest beatifications in Catholic history.

Singh said he was a great reconciler to religion and a humanist, PTI said.

Special masses were planned in churches across the country - in the southern Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu and India's predominantly Christian northeast, reports said.

Christians make up a little more than two percent of India's billion plus Hindu-majority population.