JUST over 330 years ago, devout Roman Catholic villagers in Switzerland struck a deal with God that would protect them from a bloody great glacier:

If you stop the Great Aletschgletscher from engulfing our mountain hamlets of Fiesch and Fieschertal, we’ll lead exemplary lives of great holiness – and we won’t even allow our womenfolk to wear coloured knickers.

God obliged – but then went and over-egged the pudding. Typical!



We all know – and the Holy Father reminded us in his Easter message – that an unprecedented change in the climate is taking place. The glacier is ice, ice is water and water is life. Without the glacier the springs run dry and the brooks evaporate. Men and women face great danger. Alps and pastures vanish and towns die out.

The once-encroaching glacier is now receding at an alarming pace, and the villagers, located in the south of the country, want permission from the Pope to reverse their prayers to avoid a new threat: worsening floods in the valley caused by the melting glacier, and, eventually, a loss of water supply.Whether this requested reversal of a vow made in 1678 will include acts of unrestrained gaiety, sexy undies and debauchery – an annual Gay Pride festival, perhaps? – is not known, but in 2007 hundred of people posed naked on the glacier to draw attention to the threat of global warming.Now Catholic priest Pascal Venetz has just warned villagers from the Valais region – which has sent its sons to protect the Vatican as Swiss Guards since the 16th century – that:

Venetz added that many townsfolk have begun questioning the ancient vow that has been commemorated every year since 1862 in a procession to the chapel on July 31, St Ignatius’ feast day.

The idea to alter the vow came from Fiesch Mayor Herbert Volken, but the concern was not driven by worldly or secular impulses. Instead, the villages “were seeing nature change all around them,” and realized the glacier might soon need saving, Venetz said.

Conservation body Pro Natura says the glacier base is receding up the mountain by about 100 feet (30 meters) a year. University of Zurich geographer Hanspeter Holzhauser estimates the river of ice has retreated 2.1 miles (3.4 kilometers) since peaking in 1860 at a length of 14 miles (23 kilometers). Nearly half of the shrinkage has happened since 1950.

Venetz said there were “countless, horrible natural catastrophes” in his parish from the 17th to the 19th centuries as the glacier expanded.

These led to the big volumes of water with floods that brought great damage and calamity in our villages.

Villagers should continue with the vow, but the request for divine assistance should be adjusted to conform with the changing reality of nature, the pastor said.

Praying should of course continue, because our villages should be spared from natural catastrophes. We should at the same time pray that our glacier does not melt any further, but instead grows, and that the most important thing in life – water – remains well preserved.

He said he would ask the local bishop to seek Pope Benedict XVI’s permission to change the vow, and a statement from the cantonal (state) government of Valais said a papal audience was planned for September or October.

Said Venetz: