Cost of Pope's visit to Britain 'to rise by up to £4 million'

The cost to the government of the Pope's visit to Britain is set to rise by up to £4 million, it was disclosed.

Lord Patten of Barnes, the Prime Minister's special representative for the Papal visit, said the previous £15 million estimated non-police costs of the visit had under-estimated the "complexity and sophistication" of a visit combining both State and pastoral elements.

He said the government contribution - previously estimated at £8 million - was now reckoned to rise to between £10 million and £12 million.

"We now reckon that on the government side that we will have to make a larger commitment even though we have driven down the costs of some elements of the visit," he told a news conference.

"We reckon now that the costs, apart from policing, will be somewhere between £10 and £12 million rather the £8 million or so that we were previously calculating."

He added that he believed the Church would also have to raise more money for the visit.

He was speaking as more details of the visit were revealed at the Foreign Office.

The four-day event, between September 16 and September 19, and starting in Scotland, will be the first State Visit by a Pope to Britain.

Lord Patten said the visit was "hugely welcomed" by the government and many people in Britain, not just Catholics.

Asked if the present government would have issued an invitation to the Pope given the current financial climate, Lord Patten said this would not have been a consideration.

"I think this country has to learn to live within its means... it does not mean that state visits and manifestations of the generosity of the State have to be distant memories," he said.

"This is not a return to the Middle Ages."

Under the previous estimates the Catholic Church was set to contribute £7 million towards the pastoral side of the visit.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, told the news conference around £5 million had been raised so far by the Church made up of around £1.1 million from collections in parishes and approaching £4 million from private donors and other sources.

"I would like to stress from our point of view that not a penny is expected from public funds for those aspects of the visit which are an expression simply of the Catholic faith," he said.