Pope Benedict was attacked by a disturbed woman who jumped over the barrier at the start of his Christmas Eve mass in St Peter's Basilica last night.
The 82-year-old Pontiff was not harmed and went on to finish the two-hour service, but an elderly French cardinal in the papal procession fell to the floor and was taken to hospital with a broken leg.
The woman jumps over the barricade towards Pope Benedict XVI as he walks down the main aisle
The woman is pulled back by a guard as she tries to grab Pope Benedict
This sequence of images taken from amateur video obtained by APTN shows an unidentified woman jumping over a barrier and grabbing Pope Benedict XVI
Television pictures showed the woman, dressed in a red top, jumping over the barricade and hurling herself at the pope, provoking screams from members of the congregation.
The woman was tackled by a security guard and she and the cardinal fell to the marble floor.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the woman, who he described as 'unstable,' was the same person who tried to jump a barricade to get close to the pope at last year's Christmas Mass.
The Pope, dressed in gold and white vestments, continued the procession up the centre aisle to celebrate the Mass. He seemed calm and unfazed during the rest of the ceremony.
Scary: The woman gets over the barrier and grabs the 82-year-old pontiff
But French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, who has been in frail health recently, fell to the floor and was taken away in a wheelchair. He suffered a broken femur, Lombardi said.
The woman was detained for questioning by Vatican security police and was not immediately identified.
There have been relatively few security breaches in Benedict's pontificate, which began in 2005. In 2007 a German man jumped over a barricade in St Peter's Square as the pope's jeep was passing during a general audience and tried to board the vehicle.
The most serious attack on a pope in the Vatican came in 1981 when Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, shot and nearly killed Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square.
Thursday's incident, which left Vatican security guards visibly shaken and bishops stunned, happened at the start of a Mass at which Benedict led the world's some 1.1 billion Roman Catholics into Christmas.
Injured: French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray on a wheelchair is taken to hospital at the Vatican City
Vatican security, at centre of the aisle in black, make their way towards Pope Benedict after he was knocked down during Christmas Mass
It again raised the question of how vulnerable the pope can be if he wants to maintain contact with the public.
'It's surprising that it happened inside St Peter's, because the security there has changed a great deal in recent years and is much more tight than it used to be,' the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, told the BBC.
'But there it is, I'm sure those arrangements will be reviewed and greater care will be taken,' he said.
While visitors to St Peter's Basilica must pass through metal detectors and spot checks, security once they get inside is relatively light. Vatican security is shared by a police force and Swiss Guards.
For the first time in recent memory, the Christmas Eve mass started two hours before midnight in order to give the pope more time to rest before Friday's main Christmas event at noon.
A 27-year-old German man (right) leaps over a barricade and tries to jump on to Pope Benedict XVI's open-topped Jeep last year
In his homily to more than 10,000 people inside Christendom's largest church, the pope urged the faithful to rediscover the simplicity of the nativity message.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1238201/Pope-Benedict-XVI-knocked-floor-mentally-unstable-woman-jumped-barrier-Midnight-Mass.html
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