Whacking the Pope

John Burns and Rachel Donadio have the story in The New York Times of threats against the Pope:

As Pope Benedict XVI embarked on some of the most symbolic passages of his trip here, the British police arrested six street cleaners on terrorism charges related to his state visit, but gave no details of any threat against him.
The police and the Vatican said Benedict would not change his long-planned itinerary, on a day when he became the first pope to set foot on some of the most hallowed ground of the Anglican Church and British state and warned against the “marginalization” of Christianity.
News reports said the men, 26 to 50 years old, were Algerians working for a contractor who supplied 650 workers to Westminster City Council, which serves the area of central London with the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey where the pope wound up his day on Friday. The first five were arrested in a predawn raid at a depot two miles from Westminster. The sixth was arrested at lunchtime.
While the pope’s plans did not change, security appeared to have been discreetly reinforced. As Benedict was driven through the streets of Westminster to the Houses of Parliament in his bulletproof vehicle, a dozen security men surrounded it, and police officers stood shoulder to shoulder in a cordon between crowds of well-wishers.
A police spokeswoman said earlier in the day that officials were “satisfied that our current policing plan is appropriate” to ensure the pope’s safety, and noted that Britain’s broader terrorism threat level had not been raised.
In what appeared to have been a coincidence, Jonathan Evans, the chief of Britain’s domestic security agency, MI5, issued a grim warning in a speech on Thursday that Britain continued to face “a serious risk of a lethal attack” by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists operating in the country.
The pope was on the second day of a four-day visit taking place under the shadow of the sexual abuse crisis that has enveloped the Roman Catholic Church, and in the context of the Vatican’s historically troubled relationship with the Church of England, dating to the 16th-century schism in which King Henry VIII broke with Rome.
On Friday evening, Benedict made the first visit by a pope to Westminster Abbey, the seat of the Church of England, where he and Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, presided over an ecumenical service.
Tensions have been running high a year after the Vatican announced a fast-track conversion for groups of Anglicans uncomfortable with that church’s ordination of women and openly gay priests. Few Anglicans, though, have taken advantage of the new Catholic rules.
Aimed at shoring up commonalities, the ecumenical service also underscored differences: The pope shook hands with a female Anglican priest, the first to hold an important position at Westminster Abbey, and bowed his head in a prayer offered by her, and he listened while another woman offered a prayer that referred to God as a woman.
In July, the Vatican issued new norms that make ordaining women as Catholic priests a grave crime against the faith, punishable by excommunication.
In Britain, Benedict has reinforced a central theme of his papacy: warning against secularism in Europe. In the first speech by a pontiff in the seat of British government, at the 11th-century Westminster Hall, Benedict argued for what he called “the legitimate role of religion in the public square,” calling also for greater ethics in finance.
Before a packed audience of the country’s political and civil leaders, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Catholicism, Benedict urged them “to seek ways of promoting an encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.”
“I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance,” he added.
Afterward, the speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Hayman, said that, in pluralistic Britain, Benedict’s words on faith in the public square could also apply to Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Sikhs.
The visit was weighty with symbolism. Leaving Westminster Hall, Benedict and Archbishop Williams paused at a plaque honoring Sir Thomas More, the Catholic philosopher and statesman sentenced to death in 1535 after a trial in Westminster Hall for refusing to swear allegiance to the newly Protestant state over the pope.
In his remarks on Friday, the pope did not mention the sexual abuse crisis, but he is expected to meet privately with victims before he leaves Britain on Sunday.
On his flight here on Thursday, the pope offered his most candid acknowledgment yet of the church’s failings in handling the scandal, saying church leaders had not been “sufficiently vigilant” or “sufficiently swift and decisive” in cracking down on sexual abusers.
In Scotland on Thursday, and again in London on Friday, groups of protesters mingled with crowds along Benedict’s route, mixing their jeers with the well-wishers’ shouts of welcome.
Although the papal visit continued without disruption, the arrests of the six street cleaners injected a jarring note into a day planned as a display of harmony and reconciliation. The police spokeswoman said that counterterrorism officers raided offices in central London at 5:45 a.m. and that the men were being held “on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
It was not clear whether the arrests were precautionary or related to a conspiracy under way. Police officers subsequently searched offices and homes in north and east London, but no “hazardous materials” were reported to have been found. Late in the day, Scotland Yard announced the arrest of the sixth man, and municipal officials said that he, too, was a street cleaner.
The Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, told reporters that the Pope had been informed of the threat while meeting Catholic schoolchildren on Friday morning. “We have complete trust in the police,” Father Lombardi said.
Concern about papal security has persisted since a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, tried to kill Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in May of 1981. Since then, popes have traveled with a significant security detail, protected by bulletproof glass on the “Popemobile” with bodyguards alongside.
In April, Reuters reported, two Moroccan students deported from Italy were suspected of plotting to assassinate the pope, strengthening suspicions that affiliates of al-Qaeda in North Africa were seeking potential recruits in Italy and arranging financing for attacks elsewhere in Europe.
Other than confirming that a sixth man had been arrested later, Scotland Yard withheld any further comment on the case.

Rico says the old question from WW2 still applies: How many divisions does this Pope have, anyway? And why streetcleaners? Is there some latent hatred of the Papacy among streetcleaners, albeit Algerians?