Gas attack plotter was a papal visit volunteer worker

The Mexican student arrested on Tuesday after police were alerted to posts on the internet announcing his intention to launch a chemical attack on anti-papal protestors has been released by a judge pending a charge of making threats against the social collective, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years. José Pérez Bautista must report to a police station on a daily basis and cannot leave Spain until he has been put on trial.

Bautista, 24, was a volunteer in the army of green-shirted youngsters in place to lend assistance to pilgrims attending the World Youth Day celebrations in Madrid this week, the highlight of which is the visit of Benedict XVI. He was arrested at the Ifema conference center in the north of the capital, where around 3,000 volunteers are based.

Bautista, who claimed in ultra-conservative and ultra-Catholic internet forums that he was planning a gas attack on the secular march, was arrested on charges of terrorism and is expected to appear in the High Court today. The police were alerted to his intentions by visitors to the forums.

Investigators say that Bautista, an organic chemistry student working as an intern at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), had access to the necessary materials to launch such an attack. He also explained on the internet forums the process of making corrosive substances, such as sulfuric acid. Bautista also claimed he had access to sarin, the nerve gas that was used by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the Tokyo subway attack in 1995, which killed 13 people.

Among the posts Bautista had left on the La voz libre website can be found some such as: "The molotovs are ready. Who will be brave enough to throw one against the back of an anti-papist faggot?"

Whether or not Bautista truly intended to carry out an attack or not is unclear but High Court sources praised the "preventive" actions of police after last month's Utoya massacre in Norway, the perpetrator of which, Anders Behring Breivik, had posted his intent to carry out an attack on internet forums.

"Convenient penance"

In Madrid's Retiro park a vast network of confessional booths has been constructed in which priests from around the world have been going about their business.

Madrid Archbishop Antonio María Rouco Varela has given permission for priests to lift excommunication orders on women who have abortions if they are "truly repentant."

In place of being excluded from Catholic faith, priests are to dish out "convenient penance," ranging from fingering the rosary beads or making a donation, to a pilgrimage to a shrine, or having children.

"It's not like the Middle Ages," said Miguel García, a 51-year-old from Pamplona, who said the types of penance being handed down were "going to visit the Holy Sacrament for a bit, attending Mass, or saying the rosary."

Anastasio, a 59-year-old priest from Madrid, prescribes penance that fosters "everything that means love of life and hatred of death."

He recommends that women who have aborted "live happily and jovially." His objective, he says, is to help women who have aborted to "recover their dignity."