Sawt Falasteen - Pope visits San Marino, before addressing Italian political gathering

The pontiff will spend the morning in San Marino, a 60-square-kilometre (24-square-mile) enclave of 33,000 people in the Apennine Mountains, in the latest in a series of brief pastoral visits close to 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.

After arriving by helicopter and motorcade in San Marino, the world's oldest republic, the red-and-white robed pope climbed a short distance on foot to the mountain-top Piazza della Liberta, where he was greeted by local authorities and a military band.

After holding a prayer service in the local basilica, the head of the Catholic Church will go to Rimini, a popular seaside city on Italy's Adriatic coast, 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 after World War II.

Leo, who is 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.

Other 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 Saint Augustine, the fifth-century Christian theologian who laid the foundations for the 13th-century Augustinian order to which Leo belongs.

The pontiff will also meet disabled and ailing members of the faith at Rimini cathedral before presiding over an open-air mass at the port in early evening.

Leo concentrated on short visits in Italy during the summer months, taking him to the towns of Pavia and Assisi and the island of Lampedusa.

Y.Zaher--SF-PST