(Corrects regional police chief's last name to Caringal)

MANILA, July 20 (Reuters) - Muslim gunmen freed an Italian Catholic missionary who was kidnapped in the Philippines over a month ago, a police general said on Friday.

Giancarlo Bossi, 57, a native of Milan, was freed around 9 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Thursday in the southern province of Lanao del Norte, police chief Jaime Caringal said.

In Italy, Prime Minister Romano Prodi interrupted government talks on pensions to announce Bossi's release.

"I am moved and happy. Today was his mother's birthday, a very happy coincidence," Prodi told a news conference.

Caringal, a police chief on the main southern island of Mindanao, told reporters the priest had been taken to a police camp in Zamboanga city, on the southwestern tip of Mindanao.

"He is now at Camp Cawa Cawa undergoing a medical check-up and debriefing," Caringal told reporters.

Bossi, who has lived in the Philippines for more than 20 years, was taken at gunpoint on June 10 near his church in a coastal village on Mindanao island.

Caringal said negotiations for his release gained pace a week ago after his captors sent two photographs of the priest holding a local newspaper dated July 13.

He declined to say who was behind the kidnapping but the Philippine military had said it believed a rogue faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a Muslim rebel group talking peace with the government, was responsible.

Caringal said no ransom had been paid to secure Bossi's release.

In the search for Bossi earlier this month, the military lost 14 Marines, including 10 who were beheaded, in one of the heaviest gunbattles with the MILF this year, threatening the peace process in the south. (Additonal reporting by Francesca Piscioneri in Rome)

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