THE cost of the Pope’s visit to Britain is set to rise by up to £4m.

Lord Patten of Barnes, the Prime Minister’s special representative for the Papal visit, said the previous £15m figure had under-estimated the “complexity and sophistication” of a visit combining both state and pastoral elements.

He said the Government contribution – previously estimated at £8m – was now reckoned to rise to between £10m and £12m.

“We now reckon that, on the Government side, we will have to make a larger commitment even though we have driven down the costs of some elements of the visit,” he said.

“We reckon now that the costs, apart from policing, will be somewhere between £10m and £12m, rather than the £8m 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 Roman 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.