Lourdes - A 73-year-old Spanish man loaded his car with explosives, drove to the Saint-Joseph door of the French shrine and then tried to blow himself and the car up.
The man set the inside of his car on fire, but a guard immediately pulled him out and firefighters quelled the blaze. About 40,000 people were attending Mass about 500 metres away.
The car contained three bottles of butane regulator, eight Molotov cocktails, a 22 Long Rifle and hundreds of cartridges as well as a box holding hundreds of nails.
The man later told police that he wanted to kill himself.