Search for Madeleine Continues; Parents Hold onto Faith
Portuguese police announced Friday that they found no trace of missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann, after they searched a deserted scrubland area cited in an anonymous letter.
"No evidence was found that anything at all had been buried there," police chief inspector Olegario de Sousa said after the area had been searched with sniffer dogs, not far from where the missing British girl vanished from her hotel bedroom on May 3.
An anonymous letter and map was sent to a Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, on Wednesday detailing the supposed location of the body of the missing four-year-old.
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About 10 police cars were parked in the area and officers walked around with dogs in the location that the letter indicated.
Meanwhile, the parents of Madeleine are still praying for a breakthrough and hoping to find their daughter alive.
Kate and Gerry McCann have held onto their Catholic faith throughout their ordeal, regularly attending a local Catholic church and recently traveled to Rome to meet Pope Benedict XVI, who prayed for their daughter.
But Gerry McCann, a consultant cardiologist, admitted: "If we don't get Madeleine back alive and well, I am sure our faith will be severely tested."
In the interview with The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper, Madeleine's father said: "At the end of it, we will still have our faith and we will also have comfort that Madeleine will be looked after. We haven't dwelt on that but I think that is what we will be left with.
"Our friends, our family, the Church have really rallied round. I think that's the key thing for me."
Kate McCann, a part-time general practitioner, said she had also wondered if her belief was strong enough. "I have felt guilty asking, 'Will this make or break my faith?'" she said.
"And yet at the same time you could argue that what's happened in the first place could make or break your faith and it hasn't, it's done the opposite. It has given us hope and strength."
Madeleine disappeared May 3 after her parents left her and her brother and sister, both aged 2, alone in their room while they went to a restaurant inside their hotel complex in Praia da Luz, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Lisbon and the police believe she was abducted.
Since then, the McCanns have launched an international campaign to find their daughter, enlisting the aid of celebrities including soccer star David Beckham and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books.
They also have traveled to Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Morocco to plead for help in finding Madeleine. They fear she may have been taken out of Portugal but say they have no plans to return to Britain without her.
Christian Post reporter Eric Young in Washington contributed to this report.
