The Pope's visit to Britain has so far cost Whitehall departments £10 million, according to official figures.
The Foreign Office said it hoped to publish the full cost to the taxpayer by the end of next month.
Pope Benedict XVI's four-day state visit in September, the first papal
trip to Britain since 1982, took him to London, Birmingham, Edinburgh
and Glasgow.
A written ministerial statement on departmental budgets showed that five
departments each transferred £1.85 million to the Foreign Office to pay
for the visit - a total of £9.25 million.
These were the Department for Education (DoE), Department for
International Development (DFID), Department of Energy and Climate
Change (DECC), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra), and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
The Foreign Office said later it would pay approximately £0.75 million.
The National Secular Society condemned the bill and warned that the "real eye opener" would be policing and security costs.
President Terry Sanderson said: "The spreading around of the costs of
this visit over Government departments seems an extraordinary way to
justify it.
"The Department for the Environment was roped in to pay apparently because the Pope feels strongly about environmentalism.
"But however the Government cuts it, in the end it all comes out of the taxpayer's pocket.
"What we haven't seen yet are the enormous costs of policing and
security which, despite freedom of information requests, the police seem
reluctant to reveal.
"We have a feeling that will be the real eye opener on the cost of staging this religious jamboree."
SIC: BM/UK