KEY POINTS:
An endless week on from the night her daughter vanished, Kate McCann summoned the few remaining reserves of her strength to attend a service of prayer for the child's safe return yesterday.
Her face more wracked with her distress than in recent days, she was supported into the whitewashed church by a friend and sat, arm-in-arm with her, in a front row pew.
The new Anglican minister at the Algarve village of Praia Da Luz, the Reverend Haynes Hubbard, admitted that he hardly knew where to begin.
"There's no procedure here so we make it up as we go along," he said. "We are shocked, saddened and utterly destitute."
Behind Hubbard, in McCann's line of sight, was an image of her daughter. When the minister invited the congregation to come forward and touch a candle - a symbol of light - McCann was the first to do so. She stood silently, with her hand on it, as she bowed her head and prayed. Without her husband on this occasion, she was also the first to take communion.
The little church of Nossa Senhora da Luz has begun a vigil for the child, at which those who wish are invited to lay something green - a T-shirt, or a plant - in a gesture of hope. The Catholic priest who announced the vigil, Father Jose Manuel Pacheco, had his own message for McCann. "Courage, courage, courage," he told her. He then declared in halting English that a mass tonight will mark her daughter's fourth birthday. "Saturday will be the birthday of Madeleine so we will praise the lord and ask for help," he said. The service seemed at least to have lifted McCann's spirits. She seemed strengthened as she left the church and returned to the family's apartment, to continue her wait for news.
- Independent
