The Sun, Britain’s biggest tabloid, has urged its readers to turn to prayer in an attempt to stop record-breaking levels of rain.
January has been the wettest month in 100 years for many parts of Britain, according to the Met Office, with yet more flooding expected this weekend.
The idea of a prayer campaign came from the Rev Susan Evans, a Lincolnshire vicar, who invoked the patron saint of the weather, St Medard, to bring back the sun. She reportedly told her parishioners: “Dear Lord, we’ve had enough.”
The Sun, known best for headlines such as “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster”, invited readers to join the prayer campaign to St Medard with the headline: “Bring us sun shrine.”
St Medard is known as the patron saint of weather thanks to a legend that as a child he had once been sheltered from the rain by an eagle hovering above him. He is also believed to protect those who work in the open air.
The saint’s feast day is on June 8, and a French rhyme says “Quand il pleut à la Saint-Médard, il pleut quarante jours plus tard” (“if it rains on St Medard’s day, it rains for 40 days more”).
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