Ewan McGregor felt a special link to the Catholic Church while shooting controversial new movie Angels & Demons in the Vatican City - his costume was made by the pope's own tailor.

McGregor plays a priest alongside Tom Hanks in the film, a prequel to controversial 2006 drama The Da Vinci Code.

The feature was expected to upset Catholic scholars in the Vatican because it's storyline deals with a brotherhood within the Catholic Church whose members commit murder to 'protect' Jesus Christ's lineage.

Reviewers at the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, who attended a special screening earlier this month, dubbed the film inaccurate but "harmless".

And McGregor has revealed the project got an early boost, when Pope Benedict XVI's tailor agreed to make his character's cassock.

He says, "It was so beautiful because it was made by the Pope's tailor. I don't know that the Pope knows that. I don't know that he'd be too pleased. The Vatican weren't very happy about The Da Vinci Code and as a hangover to that weren't too thrilled about Angels & Demons. But there's no anti-Catholicism or anti-Christianity in the movie - otherwise I wouldn't have made it. But his tailor made me my cassock, yeah."

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