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The man was turned away by a church security officer just before 8 p.m. and questioned by police officers, who arrested him soon after, John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said at a news conference.
“His basic story was that he was cutting through the cathedral to get to Madison Avenue,” Miller said.
There were 2 gallons of gasoline in each of the two cans the man was carrying, Miller said; the man was also carrying two bottles of lighter fluid and two extended butane lighters. The man was uninjured and the church was undamaged.
“The individual was stopped as he tried to come into the cathedral,” the Archdiocese of New York said in a statement. The man, the statement continued, “was turned over to the police. Nothing happened inside the cathedral.”
Charges had not yet been placed against the man, whose name was not immediately released.
The episode drew a heavy police presence. About a dozen officers gathered on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 50th Street in midtown, while another officer directed traffic at that corner. Another half-dozen officers stood outside the entrance to the church.
The encounter happened two days after a fire tore through the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, one of that city’s most famous monuments. Investigators are still looking into the specific cause of that fire, although it was believed to be accidental.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral seats about 2,200 people and opened its doors in May 1879.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.