Business as usual after man tries to attack the Pope

BY MARK GREAVES
THE VATICAN has dismissed calls to heighten security around Pope Benedict XVI after a young German man tried to jump into his car.
The Pope was greeting pilgrims in St Peter's Square last Wednesday when a man jumped over the barrier and grabbed the back of the opentopped vehicle.
Eleven security men tackled the man while Benedict XVI, seemingly oblivious, carried on waving to the crowd.
Roberto Sperling, 27, from Karlsruhe, was confined to a psychiatric ward after being questioned by police.
The next day Benedict XVI ignored calls for him to travel in a closed car and led the Corpus Christi procession in an opentopped truck.
Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said the attacker was in a Rome psychianic facility by 2.30 pm, about four hours after being wrestled to the ground by Vatican police.
The Axel-Springer newspaper group in Germany reported that several weeks earlier he had chained himself to a church gate in Karlsruhe. insisting Mary had given him a message for the Pope.
It was also reported that Sperling was being treated in the psychiatric ward of Rome's Hobe Spirit Hospital, just two blocks from the Vatican. After being apprehended by Vatican security agents the man was first taken to the Vatican police station and questioned by Gianluigi Mamvne, a Vatican judge, Fr Lombardi said. "The young man's intention was not to make an attempt on the life of the Pope , but to carry out a demonstrative act to attract attention to himself," he said.
Because the young man was "showing clear signs of mental imbalance, psychiatric doctors from the Vatican health service were called, and they arranged hospitalisation for obligatory treatment in a protected, specialised health facility," the spokesman said. "The case is, therefore, considered closed," he said.
Pope Benedict was in St Peter's Square for his weekly general audience. The Pope did not appear to have noticed the young man or the activity of Vatican security agents and police forcing the man to let go of the vehicle.
Dressed in a red shirt, dark shorts and a baseball cap, the young man was in the third or fourth row of spectators behind a wooden barricade in the Square. As the Pope approached, a police officer moved directly in front of the young man's section of the crowd, although it was not clear what had attracted the attention of the officer.
The young man jumped over the people in front of him and used the barricade to push himself further, knocking over the police officer.
He managed to hold on to the back railing of the car for a just a few seconds before being forced to let go.
Mgr Georg Ganswein, the Pope's personal secretary, was in the vehicle and also attempted to push the young man away.
Except during bad weather, popes riding through St Peter's Square generally have not used the covered popemobile, which has bullet-proof glass. Even after he was shot in the square in 1981 Pope John Paul II continued to use an open car for such appearances.
The papal vehicle crisscrosses the lanes that divide seating sections in the square, about an arm's length from the people in the crowd, so that everyone can get a good look and a photo.
Since the Pope insists on being out in the open, the Vatican relies on subtle layers of protection. Most importantly. before entering St Peter's Square all pilgrims now pass through airport-style metal detectors and have their bags searched in an operation carried out by the Italian police force assigned to the area around the square. The metal detectors and bag checks were introduced during the Holy Year 2000. but are now used much more routinely.