Pope Francis is due to have lunch with prisoners and visit the poor during his one-day trip to Pompeii and Naples in March, the Vatican has said.
The Pope will begin the visit, scheduled for 21 March, at the Shrine of Pompeii. The sanctuary, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Holy Rosary, was commissioned in the late nineteenth century by Blessed Bartolo Longo, a former Satanist who returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood and had a devotion to the rosary. Miracles have been attributed to an image of Our Lady of the Rosary at the shrine.
Immediately afterwards he is due to meet residents from the impoverished Naples suburb of Scampia, before celebrating Mass in the city's central Piazza del Plebiscito.
He will have lunch with inmates at the Giuseppe Salvia Detention Centre in Poggioreale and venerate the relics of St Gennaro in Naples Cathedral before visiting sick people in the nearby Basilica del Gesù.
He will also meet young people on the Naples sea-front before returning to Rome by helicopter in the early evening.
Pope Francis has talked about Satan in his homilies as a present-day reality who wants to distance each Christian from the path of Christ.
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