Used to high tides, local authorities in the lagoon city have called a state emergency.

More than 85% of Venice was flooded as the high watermark reached over 6 feet.

Wednesday's water levels were the highest in more than 50 years and are the second-highest level since records began in 1923, and there have been only six floods of similar severity.

In October 2018, floodwaters damaged part of the mosaic floor of the Madonna Nicopeia chapel.

Once the water level subsided, Venice Patriarch, Francesco Moraglia and mayor Luigi Brugnaro inspected the damage to St Mark's.

Moraglia expressed concern for those who sleep on the city's streets and appealed to Venice parishes to be the first to open their doors to these people.

"To my Venetians, so much closeness, I have asked Caritas to be active in all possible ways, and I also make available emergency funds for charity," Moraglia said, according to ACI Stampa.

"Venice is on its knees," tweeted Brugnaro.

According to Brugnaru, the flood levels represent a wound that will leave indelible marks.

"We are here with Patriarch Moraglia to show our support, but we need everyone's help to overcome these days that are putting us to the test," he said.

Brugnaro puts the damage in the hundreds of millions, says the floods are the result of climate change.

He is appealing to the Italian Government for assistance.

Italy's minister of culture, Dario Franceschini, confirmed the government will provide funding to help preserve the UNESCO world heritage site.

As yet, the amount of funding remains unspecified.

Venice sits on thousands of wooden piles driven into the mud, but rising sea levels and heavy cruise ship traffic have steadily eaten away at the surrounding marshes and mudbanks, causing the city to gradually sink.

Additional reporting

• Flooding in Venice - in pictures

Sources

• CNA
• The Guardian
• ACI Stampa

As hundreds of pilgrims were evacuated from nearby hotels, officials used sandbags and other barriers to minimise damage to the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared to St Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

About six million pilgrims visit Lourdes annually, many to bathe in the grotto's normally tranquil spring waters and pray for healing at its altar, which had to be restored after it was damaged by flash floods in October last year.

The spokesman for the Lourdes pilgrimage complex, Mathias Terrier, said waters reached a height of 1.5 metres in the grotto.

The website for the pilgrimage complex, which includes several buildings and a sanctuary nestled beneath a rocky hillside, carried a dramatic rundown of the rising waters.

Masses were gradually cancelled, Associated Press reported. One by one, entrances to the sanctuary were cordoned off. The live video feed of the grotto went down. Then the electricity was cut off, and then phones.

"A vision of the apocalypse in the Sainte Bernadette Church, where the big movable partition is threatening to fall. The water has risen above the stairs of the choir," read one announcement.

"We need more reinforcements in the area to face these floods, which are really exceptional," said Interior Minister Manuel Valls while visiting Lourdes. He said days of sustained rains and sudden snowmelt made the flooding worse, and left some villages isolated.

Two people in the region were reported to have drowned in the floods.

Sources:

Associated Press

Reuters

Image: Midi-Pyrenees

In his President's Address to the 50th Synod of the Diocese of Melbourne on Wednesday, Archbishop Philip Freier highlighted the plight of Australia's Pacific neigbours. "This month the Pacific island archipelagos of Tuvalu and Tokelau declared states of emergency, having almost exhausted their drinking water supplies' he said. "The Solomon islanders have suffered coastal erosion, threats to water supplies and food production and the costs incurred with flooding,"

He praised the passing of Federal legislation to price carbon, but criticised the carbon tax debate over the last year as being too focussed on the "short-term impact on our finances," instead of the long-term effectiveness of carbon pricing and the relative merits of a carbon trading scheme compared with a carbon tax.

Source

• Anglican Diocese of Melbourne
• Image: The Conversation