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# Blessed Water From the Sky — and Questions Over Who Paid
- URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/blessed-water-from-the-sky-and-questions-over-who-paid/
- Published: 2026-09-20T08:46:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-20T08:46:33.000Z
- Author: Our Reporter
- Tags: September 2026

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Buddhist monks aboard a Sri Lanka Air Force transport plane released blessed water over parts of the country on Sunday in a religious appeal for rain, an operation the service publicized on its social media accounts as a symbolic act of compassion.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f0/aa/f0aaf7b7-6b61-437a-846a-1a80de683912/content/images/2026/09/blessed-water-from-the-sky-and-d9a4ba-1.jpg)

Photographs posted by the Air Force showed the monks aboard a Y-12 aircraft. The service said the flight was intended to carry prayers for rain, relief and renewal for people, animals and the environment.

No publicly available announcement identifies who authorised the deployment, what the flight cost, or who paid for it.

The initiative began at the Narahenpita Abhayaramaya temple. On Aug. 28, its chief incumbent, the Ven. Muruththettuwe Ananda Thero, announced plans to conduct Wasi Piritha, a Buddhist chanting ceremony traditionally associated with invoking rain during drought. He said Pirith water would be sprinkled around the country and expressed hope that the government would cooperate, according to Esana News.

The chanting began on Sept. 2, with the temple saying it intended to recite the Pirith 100,000 times. Ananda Thero said similar ceremonies had produced results during previous droughts, Hiru News reported.

How a temple ceremony became an Air Force mission is not documented in any public record reviewed by the Jaffna Monitor. It is not known whether the request reached the Air Force through the Ministry of Defence, whether the decision was taken within the service, or whether the flight was logged against routine training hours.

Those details carry financial consequences. Parliament approved the Air Force's expenditure under Head 224 of the 2026 national budget, alongside the Ministry of Defence and the other armed services. Unless the operation was reimbursed from another source, the aircraft, fuel and crew time used for it were paid for out of public appropriations.

Sri Lanka's Constitution gives Buddhism the foremost place and obliges the state to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana under Article 9, while Articles 10 and 14 guarantee freedom of religion. The constitutional status of Buddhism governs the state's relationship to religious observance. It does not remove a particular operation from the ordinary rules of public expenditure.

The unanswered questions are narrow ones: who requested the aircraft, who approved its use, what the mission cost, who bore that cost, and under what authority a military aircraft was assigned to a religious ceremony.