Pope Francis, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) chief and Italian President and Prime Minister on Friday paid tributes to Nelson Mandela.

"It was with sadness that I learned of the death of former President Nelson Mandela, and I send prayerful condolences to all the Mandela family, to the members of the government and to all the people of South Africa," Pope Francis said in a telegram to South African President Jacob Zuma.

Mandela passed away Thursday night at the age of 95 in his home in Johannesburg following a prolonged battle with a lung infection. The leader of the opposition to the country's racist white-minority apartheid regime had spent 27 years in jail before becoming South Africa's first black president in 1994.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he was "moved" and "felt great sadness" when he heard of the Nobel Peace Prize winner's death.

"His irrepressible yearning for liberty, human dignity and equality beat the barbarity of apartheid," Napolitano said in a statement, "With his life he showed that a fairer, more supportive world, where diversity is a symptom of richness, is possible."

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta hailed him as "an example of generous commitment for rights and integration." Letta said that the Italian government would "pursue with power and determination" the actions inspired from the value Mandela owned.

Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino praised Mandela's "great intellectual honesty". "This is a teaching that is extremely useful to us, even today, and in many countries," Bonino said.

The Director General of FAO Jose Graziano da Silva regarded Mandela as "one of the world's passionate defenders of the right to food." He said that FAO has been "inspired over the years by Mandela's repeated calls to address hunger and the many social and economic ills that either led to hunger or resulted from a lack of access to food in a world of relative plenty."

"Mandela understood that a hungry man, woman or child could not be truly free. He understood that eliminating hunger was not so much a question of producing more food as it was a matter of making the political commitment to ensure that people had access to the resources and services they needed to buy or produce enough safe and nutritious food," Graziano da Silva added.

The South African government on Friday announced Mandela's funeral will be held on Dec. 15, before which a national mourning will last for 10 days.