Churches across the London boroughs around west London will this Sunday begin a week of dedicated non-stop 24-7 prayer for the family, friends and school of the missing teenager Alice Gross.
The 14-year-old's body was discovered in the River Brent on Tuesday evening, and was formally identified yesterday after a month-long search. It is now being treated as a murder investigation.
Linda Ward, Leader of Bless Community Church in Hanwell and co-chair of West London Leaders said: "We are so sad that a body having been recovered from the River Brent has been confirmed to be Alice Gross. Churches across the Boroughs are opening for prayer at this hugely difficult time."
Ward, who is helping to organise the week of prayer, has set aside an hour of inter-church worship and reflection from 7.30-8.30pm on Sunday to launch it.
"Amidst such a tragedy of the loss of a precious young girl, Alice, the support of the whole community restores ones' faith in humanity and we will continue to pray for Alice's family."
In a joint statement with her co-chair of West London Leaders, Father Andrew Davies, priest-in-charge of Christ the Saviour in Ealing, she said: "We are so sad to hear todays' news that a body having been recovered from The River Brent has been confirmed, although yet to be formally identified, to be Alice Gross. Churches across the boroughs are opening for prayer as we particularly pray for the Gross family at this hugely difficult time.
"We are aware of how greatly Alice's disappearance has impacted the whole community with the public display of support and hope with yellow ribbons tied on nearly every street."
She said that with such strong community feelings which have "roller coastered" over the past month, oscillating between hope and despair, the churches will pray for peace across the whole community.
"At a time like this, and with such a high profile case and strength of feeling, many continue to express their feelings via social media. It is clear a mixture of loss, sadness and hopelessness permeate the community. With grief and loss, we are only too aware of the various stages inevitable, including anger and denial as well as acceptance."
The leaders said the churches across the borough offered their full support to the Gross family, the police, school and wider community. The partnership between the police, church groups and other community organisations has been a feature of the long campaign to find her.
Inspector Susan Hayward, of the Metropolitan Police said: "I have worked on Ealing Borough for over 13 years and dealt with a range of very sad and challenging incidents. I have never seen a community pull together to the level it has in respect to the Alice Gross investigation." She said this had been greatly due to the work of organisations such as the churches and the #findalice campaign.
As the local Community Inspector, she said she was indebted to the churches and community leaders for the work they had done to pull the community together and to reignite the community spirit that is so often felt to be not as strong as it once was. They had all proved this belief to be wrong, "which I think is fantastic," she added.
Father Andrew and Mrs Ward, who work together as school governors, started to gather church leaders and ministries together in the area in the wake of the 2011 Ealing riots.
