In a surprise twist to the search to discover the origins of he universe Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams are to be fired at one another at the speed of light in the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.

James Gillies, Cern’s Director of Communications, told reporters that the two church leaders were almost ready to travel to the French-Swiss border. ‘They have been praying together and wishing each other a safe journey before they meet again head-on in the middle of the 27km-long circular tunnel.’

Cern’s director-general Rolf Heuer said ‘Both His Holiness and the Archbishop claim to know something of how our universe began, so by smashing their heads together at a tremendous speed we hope that we will at long last get a final answer.’

He said that the toss of a coin would decide which end of the tunnel each would be fired from. Steve Myers, Cern’s director of accelerators, said he was optimistic the two church leaders would reach the speed of light. ‘Although the two are rather bulky and not the idea shape for this, I hope that the 1.2 trillion electron volts and the 1,200 superconducting magnets will do the trick. We shall just hope and pray and increase the voltage until we get the required acceleration.’

Rolf Heuer said that though the two human projectiles would be smashed into billions of particles, he expected them to re-appear for services and mass the following day. ‘They have both spoken with certainty about the existence of God, and so we are giving them this chance to prove it scientifically. The experiment is in essence quite simple. We shall just be asking Dr Williams to remove his glasses.’