Missing Girl's Parents Take Search to Spain

By Eric Young, Christian Post Reporter Monday, June 04, 2007

The parents of four-year-old Madeleine McCann, who was abducted in Portugal four weeks ago, took the search for their missing daughter to Spain late last week as part of their international campaign.

Kate and Gerry McCann traveled to neighboring Spain in an effort to prompt anyone who might have any information about their missing daughter to come forward.

"We are here to ask the Spanish public for help and we really are imploring for that help because we feel it is possible that Madeline was moved from Portugal, possibly into Spain, although we are not certain of that," Gerry McCann said at a news conference.

In addition to the conference, the McCanns, who arrived in Madrid late Thursday, met privately with Spain's interior minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, but declined to speak to reporters afterward, The Associated Press reported. The ministry also would not comment.

Over a month has passed since Madeleine's disappearance on May 3 when her parents left her and her 2-year-old twin siblings in their hotel room while they dined at a restaurant in their hotel complex in Praia da Luz, a resort town in Portugal's Algarve region. The McCann's trip to Spain was the second of a series of visits around Europe after the couple launched an international campaign to find the girl with the aid of celebrities such as soccer star David Beckham and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series.

Last Wednesday, the couple was in Rome for a meeting with the Pope, who blessed a photograph of their daughter and prayed for the family. The McCanns, who are reportedly devout Catholics, also handed out missing posters of Madeleine written in Italian before leaving the country.

The McCanns expressed interest in raising the general issue of child abduction as well as appeal for information about their daughter as they traveled to Madrid. The British couple was scheduled to take part in a Spanish television program dedicated to missing children and meet representatives from child welfare groups and anti-pedophile organizations, according to reports.

This week, the couple plans to travel to Berlin, Amsterdam and Morocco to highlight their daughter's abduction and put the spotlight on cases of missing children around the world.

Christian Post correspondent Gretta Curtis in London contributed to this report.