Pope Francis has warned against 'conversing' with Satan, describing the 'person' of the Devil as 'more intelligent than us', an evil enemy who will 'turn you upside down'.
'I'm convinced that one must never converse with Satan - if you do that, you'll be lost,' the pontiff told Catholic broadcaster TV2000, according to the Telegraph.
He added: 'He's more intelligent than us, and he'll turn you upside down, he'll make your head spin. He always pretends to be polite - he does it with priests, with bishops. That's how he enters your mind.
'But it ends badly if you don't realise what is happening in time. We should tell him, "go away".'
Pope Francis was emphatic that Satan is not merely a generic representation of wickedness but a real person to be feared: 'He is evil, he's not like mist. He's not a diffuse thing, he is a person.'
It comes after the Pope last week stirred controversy suggesting a retranslation of the Lord's Prayer; he argued the prayer in its current form makes God the source of temptation, when really it is Satan who 'leads us' into wrongdoing.
'I am the one who falls. It's not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn't do that, a father helps you to get up immediately. It's Satan who leads us into temptation, that's his department.,' the Pope said.
A popular and socially as well as digitally engaged pontiff, Francis will soon be available for communication via a 'chatbot', according to the Catholic Herald. The Argentina-based Pope Francis Foundation on Tuesday announced the release of 'Wabot-Papa Francisco,' a chatbot that allows 'the entire Catholic community or people of any other faith to interact with the Pope,' the foundation said.
They added that the Pope is 'is a technological man, he believes that technology can help many people and understands that it is the future of communications.'
However, the Pope's spokesperson, Greg Burke, has denied rumours that Francis uses the instant messaging platform WhatsApp.
