Six men held over Pope visit ‘terror’ plot alert

Pope Benedict XVI pursued his full itinerary yesterday on his historic visit to Britain despite the arrests of six street cleaners on suspicion of plotting a “terrorist” attack linked to the trip.

The Vatican insisted that the Pope was “calm” following the alert and that there had been no change to the 83-year-old’s packed schedule.

Counter-terrorism police in London swooped at dawn to detain five men, aged between 26 and 50, “on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”, a police statement said.

A sixth man was arrested later yesterday.

Sky News reported the suspects were Algerian.

The local council in the London borough of Westminster confirmed the first five men arrested worked for an environmental services company hired by the council to clean the streets. Several reports said police swooped just as they were about to leave their depot to start their shift in Westminster, where the Pope spoke yesterday at the Houses of Parliament and attended a service with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at Westminster Abbey.

Police said there would be no change to the security measures for the four-day visit. But security was tight in Westminster, with hundreds of police on the streets, some with sniffer dogs.

Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi said: “We’re totally calm, the Pope is happy... we’re totally confident in the work of the police.”

After a private meeting between the Pope and Archbishop Williams at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Anglican leader, Pope Benedict said the difficulties between the two churches were “well known to everyone”.

But the leaders stressed they wanted to focus on the “deep friendship” between their Churches.

The attempt at rapprochement comes just 11 months after Pope Benedict offered to take in dissident Anglicans angered by their Church’s moves to consecrate female bishops.

It was a day of firsts for the Pope – no Pontiff has visited Lambeth Palace or the historic Westminster Abbey since the foundation of the Church of England when King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

At the abbey, the Pope shook hands with the woman canon, Reverend Jane Hedges, a prominent Church of England figure and campaigner for the ordination of women. The Pope is strongly opposed to the ordination of women, and Vatican rules consider it a “crime against the faith”.

Earlier, in a speech to an audience at the Houses of Parliament including former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the Pope warned that religion – and especially Christianity – was being “marginalised”.