In a concession to ultraconservatives, Pope Benedict XVI plans to loosen restrictions on the old Latin Mass, used by the Roman Catholic Church for centuries until the modernising reforms of the 1960s, a Vatican official said.

The Pope met the head of the ultraconservative movement founded by the excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre today amid a renewed push to bring the “schismatic” group back into Rome’s fold.

CROWS and falcons are top of the pecking order in the league table of bird-brains, it was revealed today. Next come hawks, followed by woodpeckers and herons.