Rome, Italy - The Vatican confirmed today that Pope Benedict XVI had sent Father Georg Gaenswein, his personal secretary, to visit the secure psychiatric unit where the Swiss-Italian woman who knocked the pontiff down on Christmas Eve is being held.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Pope Benedict, 82, had asked Father Gaenswein to pay the call on Susanna Maiolo, 25, at Subiaco near Rome on New Year's Day to "show the Pope's interest and benevolence".
He declined to comment on reports that the Pope had sent a message through Father Gaenswein "pardoning" her, but added: "All Christians forgive."
Ms Maiolo is being held at a clinic near the Abbey of St Benedict in the hills southeast of Rome until Nicola Picardi, the Vatican's chief prosecutor, who is conducting the inquiry into the incident, decides whether Ms Maiolo can be considered responsible for her actions, and if so whether to press charges of assault.
Giuseppe Dalla Torre, the president of the Vatican court, has indicated that this is unlikely given that Ms Maiolo was not armed, had a history of psychiatric problems and had apparently intended no harm. Father Lombardi said that the judicial inquiry would "run its course", and it was unclear when it would be completed.
Ms Maiolo, who has dual Swiss and Italian citizenship, vaulted barricades inside St Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve as the Pope was processing up the centre aisle to celebrate Mass. She tugged at his robes, pulling him to the ground. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray of France, 87, also fell in the ensuing melee, breaking his leg. The Pope was not hurt.
The incident sparked alarm over security surrounding the pontiff, especially as Ms Maiolo had tried to get close to the Pope at the previous year's Christmas Eve Mass, wearing the same red sweatshirt.
Father Gaenswein's visit was disclosed today in the newspaper Il Giornale, which is owned by the family of Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, who was himself injured in an assault in Milan last month when a mentally disturbed man hurled a model of Milan cathedral at his face.
This weekend the Prime Minister, 73, paid a visit to a shopping centre near his Milan mansion with his face bandaged, and returned for a check-up to the Milan hospital where he was treated for four days after the attack. His spokesman said that Mr Berlusconi would resume public duties "after Epiphany".
Renato Farina, a Catholic writer and parliamentary deputy for Mr Berlusconi's People of Liberty party (PdL), said that some people had criticised the Pope for failing to display emotion in public after the attack, or even to refer to it in his remarks over Christmas and the new year.
This had reinforced the impression that the German-born pontiff was a cold and remote figure "more interested in doctrine than humanity", unlike John Paul II, his more outgoing predecessor, who had known how to "play the world stage".
In reality, Pope Benedict had a different and "more humble" style, refusing to "place himself at the centre of anything, even when he is on the front pages", Mr Farina said.
The Pope was capable of great "friendship and hope", he said, adding: "How blind we are ... he is a Pope of great love and humility."
In his Angelus address today the Pope offered new year wishes to 30,000 people gathered in St Peter's Square, saying that although there were problems "within the Church and inside families, our hope does not rely on improbable predictions, nor even on economic forecasts".
He added: "Our hope is in God, but not in the sense of a general religiosity or some kind of fatalism cloaked in faith. Our trust is in the God who in Jesus Christ completely and definitively revealed his will to be with man, to share his history and guide us to his Kingdom of love and life ... 2010 will be more or less good to the extent that each one of us, in accordance with our responsibilities, is able to work with the grace of God."