A family friend of Gerry and Kate McCann has told police she saw a blonde-haired girl being carried away from an Algarve holiday apartment wrapped in a blanket at the time Madeleine is believed to have been snatched from her room.

The key witness, who is wracked with guilt, was on her way to dinner with Gerry and Kate McCann when she saw the man close to the open window of the bedroom where four-year-old Madeleine had been sleeping. The girl he was carrying was wearing pink pyjamas, the same as Madeleine's.

Her statement, which is the clearest evidence to date about what happened to Madeleine on the night she disappeared 25 days ago, comes as it was revealed that Mr and Mrs McCann are hoping to meet the Pope to discuss the plight of their daughter.

The parents, both strong Catholics, are expected to attend a general audience in Rome on Wednesday. It will be the start of a series of visits the couple are planning to make around Europe to keep Madeleine’s case in the public eye in the hope that she may still be found.

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Clarence Mitchell, the Foreign Office liaison officer for the family, is helping the McCanns plan the trip. “I can confirm that approaches have been made to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and to the British ambassador to the Holy See and we are certainly exploring the possibility of Gerry and Kate McCann visiting Rome to meet the Pope in the near future,” he said.

The family friend said she had see the man at 9.30pm as she arrived late for dinner with Madeleine’s parents and other friends at a tapas restaurant on the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz where they were all staying.

She did not realise the significance until Kate McCann went to check on her children, Madeleine and two-year-old twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, 30 minutes later and discovered her elder daughter was missing. Madeleine had been wearing pink and white pyjamas with Eeyore on them.

The friend immediately reported the sighting to police but detectives only released the description after Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister in waiting, intervened with the Portuguese authorities last week.

Despite the three week delay hundreds of people have called police with information since the description was released on Friday night. The man is white, approximately 35 to 40 years old, of medium build and 5ft 10ins tall. He had short hair and was wearing a dark jacket, light beige trousers and dark shoes.

At least one witness has reported seeing a person carrying a child close to the church in Praia da Luz, about 700 metres from the Ocean Club. Mrs McCann and her husband, Gerry, yesterday made one of their regular visits to the Catholic service at the Our Lady of Light church where prayers were said for the safe return of their daughter.

A police source said that the friend who believes she saw Madeleine being carried away was in the group of three British couples and a single woman who had travelled with the McCanns to Portugal. She thought the man’s behaviour was unusual but assumed it was a father taking his sleeping daughter home had no reason at the time to think it was suspicious.

“She thought it was odd, but thought it was the man’s own child. He was walking urgently, neither running or walking but something in between,” said the source.

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