20,000 protest against Pope's visit

The British Humanist Association said 10 times the expected number of people swamped the streets with blow-up condoms and banners reading: "Pope protects paedophile priests" in hand.

The mood of the crowd mirrored widespread outrage at the Pontiff's active efforts to maintain the Roman Catholic church's silence over child sex abuse and his refusal to hand over files on paedophile priests to police.

The range of humanist speakers, including the protest's organiser Peter Tatchell and famous scientist and evolutionist Professor Richard Dawkins, were late to address the crowd because of the unexpected numbers.

Sixty-three-year-old Sue Cox from Gaydon, Warwickshire, who says she was molested by a priest at the age of 10 and raped three years later by the same man, hit out at the Pontiff's attacks on "aggressive secularism" upon his arrival in Britain where he blamed the Holocaust on atheism.

She charged the Pope with "enabling child abuse" and said: "How dare he suggest that secularism does not accept or tolerate traditional values?

"The only thing I've ever experienced personally from the Catholic church is pain, anger, fear, terror, disgust, lies, shame, violence, sneering, disdain and disempowerment."

Journalist Johan Hari opened his speech by alerting the police present at the march that there was "a criminal at large in London today" to enthusiastic "arrest the Pope" calls from the crowd.

Mr Hari said: "In 2001 he wrote to every bishop in the world and he told them to keep this memo in their safe and he said that any allegations of child sex abuse should be dealt with in the utmost secrecy, restrained by perpetual silence and the pain of excommunication.

"Joseph Ratzinger is a person like all of us and should be held accountable under the law."

And he blasted the Pope's expression of sorrow on Sunday to the countless victims of clerical sex abuse, saying: "He talks about repentance - there is no other criminal in the world we allow to say sorry and walk free.

"You want to repent? Repent from your prison cell."

Prof Dawkins branded the Pope "an enemy of humanity" because he was "an enemy" to children, gay people, women, science and education.