Kate and Gerry McCann have arrived at the Vatican for their personal meeting with the Pope. Fighting back tears, they left Portugal yesterday for the first time since their daughter Madeleine disappeared nearly four weeks ago Their two-year-olds Sean and Amelie waved and said "Bye, bye" as Mr and Mrs McCann left them in the care of relatives for a 24-hour trip to Rome to meet the Pope. "prominently" to Madeleine during prayers in St Peter's Square.
Throughout their ordeal the McCanns, church-going Catholics, have leaned heavily on their faith. They have attended services regularlyvisited Portugal's holiest shrine Fatima last week and believe the trip to Rome will be spiritually uplifting. them a tremendous amount of strength and comfort.
" Mr and Mrs McCann hope to get back to Praia da Luz in time to put Sean and Amelie to bed. Later they plan to visit Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Morocco to raise awareness about their daughter. The trip comes days after video footage of Madeleine was released by her parents.
The two short film clips, taken by a family friend on a mobile on 28 April, show Madeleine, dressed all in pink, clambering up the steps to the aircraft at East Midlands airport and sitting on a shuttle bus at Faro airport. Scroll down for more..
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Since Madeleine vanished, her mother has carried her favourite toy Cuddle Cat everywhere as a poignant symbol of hope. But it has emerged that the toy could have been a crucial key in tracking down Madeleine's abductor if only police had carried out proper forensic tests on it.
Madeleine took the soft toy to bed with her every night and it was with her when her parents tucked her up in bed alongside her brother and sister on May 3 before going out for dinner 40 yards away. When Kate came back to check on the children, Madeleine had vanished but the cat had been left behind. Any forensic or DNA evidence that an abductor might have left on the toy could be vital to identifying him, but experts said the subsequent contamination would make it difficult or impossible to recover a reliable sample.
One said: "It's an absolutely glaring error. immediately and examined in scientific conditions." The apparent failure joins a catalogue of blunders and shortcomings in a police operation that has so far found not a single trace of Madeleine, who will have been missing for four weeks tomorrow.
It has become clear that the police account of the most reliable and detailed description of her likely abductor, given by a woman who saw someone walking off with a child wrapped in a blanket, got his height wrong. The woman, who was on her way to join the McCanns for dinner that night, described him as being 5ft 7in tall. It took detectives 22 days to release that description to the public and appeal for information - but they said they were looking for a man who was 5ft 10in tall.
Incredibly, the error appears to have been made through a simple mis-conversion of centimetres to inches. In Portuguese, police declared that he was 170cm tall, which is 5ft 7in. Then in English, they said he was 5ft 10in.
The extra three inches would make a crucial difference between a "tall" suspect and one of average height. To add further confusion, a Portuguese police press release gave a height of between 170cm and 175cm, which is between 5ft 7in and just under 5ft 9in. Robert Murat, who is 5ft 8in.
15 people have commented on this story so far. Tell us what you think below. Here's a sample of the latest comments published.
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- Salman Ali, London
Our heart goes out to Mr and Mrs McCann and all their family in this terrible time. We are really praying constantly to God for the safe return of precious little Madeleine.
- Denise, Malta
I have a daughter the same age, and look at her thinking if something so terrible would happen to her I would die. What's so awful is not knowing. I suffer for the whole family and see that they are doing all they can.
All of us need to keep our eyes open and pray that she will return.
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