© Maxime Schmid, European Pressphoto Agency
Pilgrims from the Swiss villages of Fiesch and Fieschertal pray for glacier growth late last month.
Pilgrims from the Swiss villages of Fiesch and Fieschertal pray for glacier growth late last month.
By 7:30 the group had swollen to around a hundred - too many to fit inside the chapel of Maria Heimsuchung, or Mary of the Visitation, so a makeshift altar was erected outside.
"Glacier is ice, ice is water, water is life," intoned priest Toni Wenger, before beseeching God to stop the glaciers high above them from melting.
By changing a few, crucial words in the liturgy, Father Wenger reversed a Catholic ritual that for 350 years had implored the heavens to push back the glaciers.
The Vatican had approved the change as the effects of global warming became all too tangible in the Alps.
Climate change's effects are accentuated in mountainous regions, and in the 20th century temperatures in Alpine Switzerland increased by twice the global average. Today Swiss glaciers are shrinking by nearly 33 feet (10 meters) a year, on average. What's more, alpine communities are reporting more rain and stronger winds than in centuries past.
