Approximately 20 people attended a religious ceremony this Wednesday, at the Church of Praia da Luz, to mark the passage of 1000 days since the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, which happened in May 2007, in that Algarve village.

The initiative, which was organised by the FindMadeleine Fund, and celebrated by Anglican priest Haynes Hubbard, gathered mainly members of the English community that resides in Praia da Luz, near Lagos.

At the end of the prayer “to remember Maddie”, which lasted for about half an hour, the participants set off some light lanterns into the sky, in a homage to the little missing girl.

“It’s a symbolic gesture to mark the disappearance, with a request for Madeleine to return to her parents”, Haynes Hubbard told the journalists.

“We want to help maintain the efforts to find Maddie”, he observed.

In the United Kingdom, the FindMadeleine fund prepared similar initiatives, in order to mark 1000 days after Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

Madeleine McCann, then aged four, disappeared on the night of May 3, 2007, from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, while she was sleeping in her bedroom with two siblings and her parents dined in a nearby restaurant.

The parents, Kate and Kerry [sic] McCann, who always maintained the position that Maddie was abducted, were made arguidos in September 2007, but ended up being cleared in July 2008 due to a lack of evidence to sustain the hypothesis that had been put forward by the inquiry, of the little girl’s accidental death.

The Public Ministry archived the process, that may be reopened at any time, if new data that is considered to be consistent, about the child’s disappearance, appears.