OK, so finally solved the issue. I had to do the following:
1. OpenSUSE Leap 15 ships with both openssl 1.0 and 1.1. openssl 1.1 is the default and libssl.so is soft linked to openssl 1.1. I created 2 new softlinks for libssl and libcrypto and changed the dll names in openssl.pas.
2. I had to allow redirects and add a useragent to get
https://www.google.com to work. Code below works now:
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
Var S : string;
HTTP : TFPHttpClient;
begin
HTTP := TFPHttpClient.Create(nil);
// HTTP. .Sock.SSL.SSLType := LT_TLSv1_2;
HTTP.AllowRedirect:=True;
HTTP.AddHeader('User-Agent','Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; fpweb)');
S := HTTP.Get('https://www.google.com');
HTTP.Free;
Memo1.Text:= S;
end;
Thanx for all who assisted