Vatican City: Pope Francis has put Satan in his place, citing the devil repeatedly in a new document following a Vatican rebuke last month of a journalist who quoted him as saying hell does not exist.

In the document known as an Apostolic Exhortation called Gaudete et Exsultate, (Rejoice and Be Glad), the pope also bewails the amount of defamation and slander spread online by some Roman Catholic bloggers and Twitter users.

Satan gets more than a dozen mentions in the document as Francis talks about how life can be "a constant struggle against the devil, the prince of evil".

"Hence, we should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable."

Francis refers to the "wiles of the devil", "the spirit of the devil", "keeping the devil at bay", how to "banish the devil", and "snares and temptations of the devil".