Don’t forget Madeleine during lockdown: Kate and Gerry McCann ask well-wishers to pray for missing daughter as they mark 13th anniversary of her disappearance
- Kate, 52, and Gerry, 51, are asking people to join in with prayers tonight at 7pm
- They usually have an outdoor gathering but it was cancelled this year due to coronavirus
- They will mark the day behind closed doors with their 15-year-old twins
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Madeleine McCann’s parents are urging people to ‘please remember Madeleine’ despite the coronavirus lockdown.
Kate, 52, and Gerry, 51, are marking the 13th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance and asking people to join in with prayers tonight.
The couple usually have an outdoor gathering at the village war memorial which has had to be cancelled this year because of the pandemic.
The family will mark the day behind closed doors with their 15-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
Kate, 52, and Gerry McCann, 51, are marking the 13th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance and asking people to join in with prayers tonight
On their Facebook page, Official Find Madeleine Campaign, they said: ‘It is now 13 years since we were last with Madeleine.
‘Her 17th birthday is to follow in the next couple of weeks… the latter tangibly, painfully, bringing it home to us what we have missed and continue to miss as a family.’
Maddie’s great-uncle Brian Kennedy said the family had circulated two prayers to churchgoers, the Daily Star reported.
He said they are asking people to remember the anniversary and read or say the prayers at 7pm on Sunday, which is when the outdoor gathering would normally be held.
Heart doctor Gerry and ex-GP Kate, from Rothley, Leicestershire, cling on to hope that Maddie could still be alive.
On their website Find Madeleine they say that there is nothing to suggest Maddie has been harmed and she’s still missing, young and vulnerable and needs their help.
On May 3, which marks the anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance, the couple normally go to church then walk a mile from their house to the village war memorial, where a gathering is held.
A candle still burns as a beacon of hope for Maddie after she vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.
She had been inside sleeping with her two-year-old siblings while Gerry and Kate were in a nearby tapas restaurant with friends.
The couple insist they made regular checks on the children throughout that evening and have never given up hope of finding their daughter.
A candle still burns as a beacon of hope for Maddie after she vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007
British police have requested new funding to continue the £12million search. A Met Police source said they’d been told there hopefully wouldn’t be a problem with new funding.
The Met took over the hunt in 2011 after Gerry and Kate made a personal plea to then-Prime Minister David Cameron.
Ex-detective Mark Williams-Thomas recently claimed the case will never be solved because a crucial CCTV camera was switched off when Maddie disappeared.
On their website Find Madeleine Kate and Gerry said: ‘There will also be many vulnerable people whose situation will have become even more precarious in the current lockdown conditions, with fear, worry and isolation – emotions that we dreaded Madeleine experiencing and which haunted us for a long time – and still do on occasions.
‘Our thoughts and prayers are with all those suffering at this time.’
This week, the McCanns were targeted by trolls who photoshopped an image from an old public appeal.
They edited the photo so it looked like they were holding a placard saying the slogan ‘Stay at home, save lives’.