VATICAN CITY, (Reuters) – A woman the Vatican  described as unstable jumped over a  barricade, lunged at Pope  Benedict and knocked him to the floor at the start of his  Christmas Eve mass in St Peter’s Basilica yesterday.

The 82-year-old pope was apparently not harmed and went on  to finish the two-hour service but an elderly French cardinal in  the papal procession fell to the floor and was hospitalised with  a broken leg.

Television pictures showed the woman, dressed in a red top,  jumping over the barricade briskly and throwing herself against  the pope, who fell to the marble floor.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the woman,  who he described as “unstable,” was the same person who tried to  jump a barricade to get close to the pope at last year’s  Christmas Mass.

The Pope, dressed in gold and white vestments, was helped up  by security men and after a few seconds continued the procession  up the centre aisle to celebrate the Mass.

But French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, who has been in  frail health recently, fell to the floor and was taken away in a  wheelchair. He was hospitalised with a broken femur, Lombardi  said.

The woman was detained for questioning by Vatican security  police and was not immediately identified.

The incident, which left Vatican security guards visibly  shaken and bishops stunned, happened at the start of a Mass at  which Benedict led the world’s some 1.1 billion Roman Catholics  into Christmas for the fifth time since his 2005 election.

For the first time in recent memory, the mass started two  hours before midnight in order to give the pope more time to  rest before today’s main Christmas event at noon (1100 GMT).    In his homily to more than 10,000 people inside  Christendom’s largest church, the pope urged the faithful to  rediscover the simplicity of the nativity message.

He recounted the traditional Christmas story of Christ’s  birth in a manger in Bethlehem and urged Catholics to put aside  the complexities and burdens of daily life and rediscover the  path to God.

“We live our lives by philosophies, amid worldly affairs and  life and rediscover the path to God.

“We live our lives by philosophies, amid worldly affairs and  occupations that totally absorb us and are a great distance from  the manger,” he said.

“In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us and reach out to  us again and again, so that we can manage to escape from the  muddle of our thoughts and activities and discover the way that  leads to him,” he said.

Benedict today delivers his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi”  message to the city and the world from the central balcony of St  Peter’s Basilica to crowds in the square below.