POLAND: MPs from Poland's ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) got a huge laugh in parliament after calling for a special Mass yesterday to pray for rain.
The laughing politicians on the opposition benches were silenced immediately however by a call for order by the parliament's speaker after it emerged that the request was serious.
"Some MPs wrote on a piece of paper that they wanted a Mass for rain," a spokesman for PiS said. "It was probably an initiative from some of our MPs, but we don't know. Some parliamentary staff said they saw our official stamp on the letter but now the letter has disappeared so we have no way to check whether it was a trick or a misunderstanding."
In the end only 20 MPs found their way to the Sejm's tiny chapel yesterday morning, most likely because the temperature in Warsaw finally dropped below 30 degrees for the first time in weeks and a weekend of rain was forecast.
Mass is held in the Sejm chapel every morning for a handful of MPs. The PiS spokesman said the new prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski was not at the Mass and no one was obliged to attend.
"We think that religion is a private matter for MPs and if some MPs don't want to take part in religious ceremonies, they have a free choice," he said.
Poland has been baking in temperatures well above 30 degrees for weeks. Polish farmers have warned of a 10 per cent drop in crop yield because of the extreme heat and the authorities have banned entry to many forests because of the danger of fires.
Heavy trucks have been banned from most Polish motorways from 11am to 10pm because they were destroying the tar surface that had reached temperatures of up to 50 degrees.
Exceptions have been made for trucks transporting food and livestock, empty vehicles and buses. By yesterday afternoon, huge tailbacks had built up at German-Polish border crossings.
Praying for rain is not unusual for Poles: three years ago in August the late Pope John Paul urged Catholics to "ask the Lord fervently to grant the thirsty Earth the coolness of rain".
Piotr Kaczynski, a political analyst in Warsaw, said: "It's quite popular here that people pray for everything, not that they're stupid enough to believe that it will be enough. It is a tradition that somehow still survives."