Fire damages New York cathedral

New Yorkers' sense of stability, challenged in the past three months by terrorist attacks, anthrax and a plane crash, was disturbed again yesterday when one of their outstanding buildings caught fire.

Up to two hundred firefighters were sent to the Episcopal cathedral of St John the Divine, the world's biggest, to tackle the fire, which began in the gift shop.

The damage was thought not to be as bad as had appeared when the flames were rising before daybreak.

"Some events will be cancelled, but as long as there's space and we can use it the services will go on," the vicar bishop, Don Taylor, said. "But it's just painful to see this church engulfed in smoke."

The neo-gothic cathedral on the Upper West Side of Manhattan has enough floor space to accommodate Chartres and Notre Dame.

Church officials were worried about the fate of the Barberini-designed 17th and 18th century tapestries woven on the pope's official loom.

"There was such a heavy smoke condition inside that the firefighters couldn't see anything," the New York fire commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, said.

"Thermal imagers allowed them to pinpoint exactly where it was and limit the damage."

No one is thought to have been hurt in the building, which is visited by about 250,000 people a year for religious services, concerts and cultural events.

Work started on the cathedral in 1892 but, for lack of funds, it is still far from completed.

Its famous visitors have included Martin Luther King Jr, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Duke Ellington performed his Sacred Concert there in 1968.