Issuing a stark warning during a televised interview, Pope Francis said Satan is “more intelligent than us” and any interaction with the Prince of Darkness “ends badly”.
Speaking to Catholic broadcaster TV2000, the Pontiff said: “I’m convinced that one must never converse with Satan – if you do that, you’ll be lost.
“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’.
“He is evil, he’s not like mist. He’s not a diffuse thing, he is a person.”
The pontiff regularly references the Devil in his sermons and to his 40 million followers on Twitter.
And last week, the Pope called for a change in the wording of the Lord’s prayer because it suggested God “induces temptation” rather than Satan.
Pope Francis uses a variety of terms to refer to Satan, including the Evil One, the Seducer, Beelzebub and the Great Dragon.