ROME  Stung by the televised knockdown of Pope Benedict XVI at Christmas Eve Mass  by a woman who had sought to assault him a year ago  the Vatican said Friday it would review security procedures, raising the possibility of more stringent public access to the pope, leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

Benedict, 82, was unhurt. He quickly recovered and celebrated Mass, and he looked well hours later as he delivered his traditional Christmas Day greeting from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday. A French cardinal caught in the scuffle suffered a fractured thighbone.

The assailant, identified by the Vatican as Susanna Maiolo, a 25-year-old Swiss-Italian national with a history of mental problems, was held for questioning and hospitalized in Rome. She was not under formal arrest, and it was unclear whether she would face charges.

Yet the assault on the pope, captured on television and by tourist cameras and replayed countless times, raised serious questions about Vatican, and Italian, security. It was the first direct attack on Benedict since he became pope in 2005, and it came less than two weeks after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was hospitalized after a mentally unstable man struck him at a campaign rally.