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'God, give us rain' – Romanian monastery prays for end to drought
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Rain prayers: Priests attend a religious service performed for rain to end the drought near Draganesti-Vlasca, Teleorman county, Romania, on July 4. (Reuters/Octav Ganea/Inquam Photos)
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ulia Coleasa, an 81-year-old who relies on her small plot for food, traveled 15 kilometers in searing heat to a monastery in southern Romania on Sunday to join a service praying for rain.
Temperatures have spiked above 40 degrees Celsius in the country this week and the drought has left hundreds of Romanian villages with rationed water. Crops are being decimated in the country, which is an exporter of grains.
Romania's Orthodox Church has asked clerics to perform traditional rain prayers. At the Pantocrator monastery in the southern Romanian county of Giurgiu, Culeasa joined roughly 100 people in prayer.
She said the weather had never been this bad.
"I haven't seen drought like this until now," she said.
"We have children, we have cattle. We make an effort to plant tomatoes in the garden and they dry out and we have nothing to eat. God, give us rain, don't abandon us."
More than 40 percent of Romania's population of 20 million live in the countryside and many rely on subsistence agriculture on small plots of land. The country has massive investment needs in infrastructure, including roads, running water and irrigation.
