3-oz. limit also means holy water

PARIS -- Even holy water from the Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes can't get by airport security screening passengers for suspicious liquids.

A passenger on a new Vatican-backed charter airline had to hand over a container of water collected at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral to security officials at the airport in southern France on Monday before boarding a return flight to Rome, officials for Mistral Air said.

They identified the passenger as Italian television personality Paola Saluzzi.

Airport officials barred other pilgrims on the Mistral Air flight from taking holy water from the shrine back to Rome, the Italian news agency Apcom reported. The pilgrims protested that they had waited in long lines to fill up their bottles with holy water from the grotto.

Airport officials refused to comment on the incident, saying only that international regulations banning passengers from carrying containers with more than 3 ounces of liquid aboard are applied across the board.

"All passengers are obliged to respect the rules and not go over the quantities [of liquid] permitted" on flights, said Franck Hourcade, an official at the Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees International Airport.

Francesco Pizzo, Mistral Air's president, said the company had provided small bottles shaped like a Madonna and full of holy water on every seat for when the pilgrims came back on board.

Monday's round-trip flight to Lourdes was the company's inaugural trip.

Mistral Air, a small airline owned by the private Italian post office and an outfit that organizes pilgrimages for the Diocese of Rome, is to carry pilgrims to such Catholic shrines throughout the world.