The service will be free of charge on Mondays, the day on which barber shops and hairdressers in Italy are traditionally closed, starting February 16 in specially renovated premises under St Peter's colonnade.
It will be provided by volunteer barbers from UNITALSI (Italian National Union for Transport of the Sick to Lourdes and International Shrines) and Rome's barber school, who have already donated razors, brushes, scissors, a mirror and a barber's chair towards the effort.
The three new showers and toilets ordered by the pope last November should also come into operation in the same premises on the same day.
"The first thing we want is to give people their dignity," Monsignor Konrad Krajewski, the Polish archbishop who heads up the Office of papal charities, told ANSA.
"A person who isn't able to wash is rejected by society and we all know that a homeless person cannot enter a public place such as a bar or restaurant and ask to use the services because these are denied.
"But of course showering and being able to wash one's underwear is not enough. It is also necessary to have tidy hair and a neat beard, also to prevent disease.
"This is another service that a homeless person might have difficulty accessing in a normal shop because of fears of the spread of diseases such as scabies to the other customers."
