The White House has confirmed that President Joseph Biden will visit the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock, better known as the Knock Shrine, during his trip to Co Mayo later this week.

On Friday, Biden’s visit to the Knock Shrine will the first engagement of the final day of his four-day visit.

Fr Richard Gibbons, parish priest and rector of Knock Shrine, said Biden’s stop-off would “probably be the most private element of his visit to Ireland”. The priest said that because of the US president’s “commitment to his faith”, he wanted stop off at Knock and “say a private prayer”.

Biden will be gifted a stone from the gable wall of the Knock chapel where the apparition of Mary occurred in 1879, Fr Gibbons said.

The final engagement of Biden’s trip will be Friday evening’s public address in front of St Muredach’s Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Catholic Diocese of Killala, a church his ancestor Edward Blewitt sold 27,000 bricks to in the 1820s that helped fund the cost of his emigration to the US in 1851.