by Fred Kelly, Daily Mail
It’s Sunday evening and more than 100 worshippers are attending Mass in Westminster Cathedral, the UK’s largest Catholic church.
But while the sound of choral music and the soothing words of the liturgy echo around the 130-year-old building, the scene outside is far from holy.
For in one of the church’s exterior alcoves on Ambrosden Street, little more than 30 feet from the main altar inside, the Daily Mail watches as a topless man in tight khaki trousers and matted dark hair greets another individual whose rolled-up tracksuit bottoms expose hideous cuts and scrapes up his legs.
The topless man hands over a small package of what looks like white powder. The other pays with a single £10 note.
Westminster Cathedral is not only the most revered site of Roman Catholic worship in the country and the place where Boris and Carrie Johnson married in 2021, it also lies at the heart of the capital’s most famous district, the so-called London Heritage Quarter, which includes Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.
In recent months, however, the cathedral and its grounds have been overrun with petty criminals pushing a range of Class A drugs – including cocaine, heroin and the synthetic drug known as ‘spice’ – to a growing community of local vagrants for as little as £5 a hit.