A NEW, Vatican-approved charter flight service leaves little doubt about what its clients are doing at 30,000 feet: “I Search for Your Face, Oh Lord” is the slogan of Mistral Air, set up to fly the deluded to and from a variety of ‘holy’ shrines around the world.

But the faces of passengers returning to Rome from Lourdes this week were both angry and glum when the “faith flight” officials flatly refused to allow them to bring “holy” water on board.

They were told they had to obey anti-terrorism rules, and several of them had their “holy” water confiscated. The pilgrims protested that they had waited in long lines to fill up their bottles with “holy” water from the grotto, but to no avail.

Airport officials refused to comment on the incident, saying only that international regulations banning passengers from carrying containers with more than 100 ml of liquid onboard are applied across the board.

“All passengers are obliged to respect the rules and not go over the quantities (of liquid) permitted on flights,” said Franck Hourcade, an official at the Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees International Airport.

No bottles containing more than 100 ml of liquid were allowed on board unless checked in, meaning passengers were forced give up the holy water they had just collected at Lourdes.

Many hoped to ferry the water back to sick relatives. Instead, dozens of plastic containers in the shape of the Madonna were left at security, while one man decided to drink all of his.

“I did tell others that their containers would not be allowed. Those who travel a lot know that they do not make exceptions,” said Massimo Barra, head of the Red Cross in Italy, who was on board.

Many passengers asked the police how they could be foolhardy enough to throw away the “miraculous” water, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The Vatican’s new service, a Boeing 737 painted in yellow-and-white papal livery, took off from Rome’s Fiumicino airport on Monday, serving swordfish canapes to 148 pilgrims reclining on headrests stamped with the message: “I search for your face, oh Lord”.

The spring at the sanctuary at Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in 1858, is famed for its “miraculous” healing powers, and every day long queues of believers wait to fill up their containers.

The water is so valuable that one French website, www.lourdes-water.com, is offering a litre for £64.

Cardinal Ruini, the former head of the Italian bishops, was on board, along with Luciano Moggi, the disgraced former head of Juventus football club, who was seeking some spiritual comfort.

The Vatican has promised that seats would cost at least 10 per cent less than the industry average, and that some pilgrims may be able to fly to Lourdes and back in the same day.

It also wants to expand its service to routes such as Fatima in Portugal, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and possibly even Jerusalem.

Mistral Air, the charter company which is providing the planes for the Vatican, said it expects to transport 150,000 pilgrims annually.

Mistral Air plans to shuttle Catholic pilgrims around the globe to holy sites, including the shrine of Fatima in Portugal and the shrine of the Madonna of Guadalupe in Mexico.

“The spirit of this new initiative is to meet the growing demand by pilgrims to visit the most important sites for the faith,” Father Cesare Atuire at the Vatican pilgrimage office, the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, told La Repubblica daily.