Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon is to have a private audience with the Pope.

The meeting is due to take place on Thursday morning in Rome.

Mr Mallon, the deputy leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party ( SDLP) is following in the footsteps of First Minster David Trimble who met Pope John Paul II in the Vatican last June.

The unprecedented visit by Mr Trimble, a Protestant and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, sparked fury in unionist quarters in the province.

It came at a time when Mr Trimble, who was elected as Northern Ireland's first minister, still had to take up his powers because of the on-going row over paramilitary decommissioning.

A party spokesman later said the Ulster Unionist told the Pope he hoped 1999 would see peace come to Northern Ireland.

The Pope replied that he recalled his own visit to Ireland. Murder could not be justified by any cause or name, he added.

Mr Trimble's papal reception came alongside 53 other Nobel Peace Prize winners, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Ulster Unionist leader was to have been accompanied by leader of the SDLP and fellow Nobel laureate John Hume. However, Mr Hume did not attend the reception.