Vatican bans filming of new Dan Brown movie

The filming of a Dan Brown thriller – the prequel to his best-selling The Da Vinci Code called Angels and Demons - has run into problems. The Vatican, no doubt with the full support of the Pope, has forbidden the producers of the movie, which again stars Tom Hanks (pictured with Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci Code), from filming in any of its grounds - or indeed any church in Rome. This is not because of the quality of the prose that inspired it – nor the quality of the last film, roundly condemned by critics – but because they feel the work is "an offence against God".

Said Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, the head of the Vatican's Prefecture for Economic Affairs: "It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into films in the name of business."

Angels and Demons revolves around a plot by a sinister elite known as the Illuminati to install their candidate as Pope and blow up the Vatican. Crucial scenes in the novel are set in the Vatican and two Rome churches - Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria. In both churches, cardinals are murdered and mutilated with mysterious marks and symbols.

Father Marco Fibbi, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rome, said: "Normally we read the script but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough. When a film is about the saints or about stories regarding the Church's artistic values, then we give permission without any doubts. But when it is a question of content which does not relate to traditional religious criteria, then our doors are closed." ·