Sawt Falasteen - Pope to visit San Marino, address Italian political event

The pontiff is to spend the morning in the 60-square-kilometre (24-square-mile) enclave of 33,000 people in the Apennine Mountains in what will be the latest in a series of brief pastoral visits not far from home this summer.

The trip by the pope -- who rules over the world's smallest country, Vatican City -- follows one made in March to another European statelet, the principality of Monaco.

In San Marino, the world's oldest republic, the Chicago-born pope is to meet with local authorities before holding a prayer service in the local basilica.

The head of the Catholic Church will then head to Rimini, a popular seaside city on the Adriatic, for the annual gathering of Communion and Liberation, a Christian group.

The "Rimini Meeting" is a prominent event mixing religion, culture and politics that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every summer.

Historically, the event was closely linked with the Christian Democratic movement, the now-defunct centrist Catholic political party that dominated Italian politics for nearly 50 years in the post-war period.

Leo, who is scheduled to give an address at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT), will be the first pontiff to take part in the event since Pope John Paul II in 1982.

Fellow speakers this year include Jerusalem's Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and both of Italy's deputy prime ministers, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini.

Ahead of his address, the pope will visit an exhibition dedicated to St Augustine, the influential fifth-century Christian theologian who laid the foundations for the 13th century Augustinian order to which Leo belongs.

He will also meet people with disabilities and sick members of the faith at Rimini's cathedral before presiding over an open-air mass at the city's port in early evening.

Leo has taken no long voyages this summer, instead venturing to Pavia, Lampedusa and Assisi for short visits.

B.Mahmoud--SF-PST