Leaders of Ukraine’s churches vowed this week to continue standing with their country against Russian invaders, as the Vatican offered mediation and exploratory peace talks took place, despite fierce fighting, between Ukrainian and Russian delegations.
“We have seen the heroism of our soldiers and courage of our people, as the elderly lie down before tanks to keep them from their villages and cities”, Major Archbishop Svetoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halich told Ukrainians on Monday.
“Even when it seems impossible, when diplomats, lawyers, heads of state say it is very difficult, let us pray that Gods imparts wisdom to stop this aggression through dialogue... At the end of war, we always have to sit at the negotiating table - so let dialogue and diplomacy win”.
The Ukrainian Catholic archbishop issued the message as battles were reported around Ukraine’s second city, Kharkhiv, with dozens of civilians killed and injured by Russian Grad rockets, and as Western governments stepped up economic sanctions and pledges of military support to the country.
He said Ukrainians were witnessing atrocities in a “bloody, inhuman and brutal war”, as Russian tanks used women and children as “living shields to bring death and destruction to the heart of Ukraine”, but added that he was grateful to the Pope for being willing to help stop the fighting.
Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox church praised his country for “worthily passing a difficult test of civic and spiritual maturity” against aggression by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
“We are protecting not only ourselves but the rest of Europe and the entire civilised world from the bloody delusions of the Russian leader”, Metropolitan Epifanij Dumenko said in a video message on Monday. “Ukraine has been successfully defending its freedom and future from the tyranny Putin wants to impose on us.”
Detachments from Russia’s invasion force, amassed in various border regions since last autumn, attacked Ukraine in the early hours on 24 February, triggering harsh resistance from Ukraine’s 200,000-strong armed forces and rapidly expanded volunteer militia, as well as a huge refugee exodus towards the country’s western frontiers.
Peace talks were reported to have taken place on the Belarusian border on Monday, as Russian troops held several border areas but took heavy casualties and failed to secure advances on most target towns and cities.
Addressing St Peter’s Square pilgrims on Sunday, the Pope said Catholics had been shocked by the outbreak of war, after “repeatedly praying this road would not be chosen”, and repeated his call for Ash Wednesday, 2 March, to be marked by prayer and fasting for peace.
“He who wages war forgets humanity, he does not think about people, or have before his eyes the concrete life of people, but puts partial interests and power above all”, the pontiff said.
“He trusts in the diabolical and perverted logic of the weapon that is furthest from God’s will. He moves away from ordinary people who want peace, and in every conflict, it is ordinary people who are the real victims, paying a personal price for the madness of war.”
Meanwhile, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, warned Italian newspapers on Monday that escalation of the conflict to other countries, as the European Union and other Western governments announced their intention to send weapons to Ukraine, would risk a “gigantic catastrophe”.
He added that Pope Francis had urged “a stop to fighting and return to negotiations” during an unprecedented personal visit to Russia’s Rome embassy on 25 February, and was ready to offer further help.
“Although what we feared and hoped would not happen has happened, a war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine, I am convinced there is always room for negotiation. It is never too late,” Cardinal Parolin added.
“The Holy See, which has followed events in Ukraine over recent years constantly, discreetly, and with great attention, is willing to facilitate dialogue with Russia and always ready to help the parties resume that path.”
In his message on Monday, Archbishop Shevchuk said his Greek Catholic church, combining loyalty to Rome with the eastern rite, was ready to help repatriate Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, put at several thousand by Ukrainian officials, aided by a special hotline for relatives.
He added that 400,000 people were estimated by the United Nations to have fled the war in just five days, as Catholic Church leaders in neighbouring Poland, which has received most refugees, set up aid bank accounts and announced special collections during Masses nationwide.
Besides Poland, which was sheltering up to two million Ukrainians before the war, pledges of help have also come from churches in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, which are also expecting thousands more to arrive in coming days.
Condemnations of the Russian offensive have come from Orthodox leaders from the United States to Australia, and from Finland to Greece, as well as from the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, who said he was “deeply shocked” by President Putin’s “unprovoked attack on an independent and sovereign European state”, which would inflict “human rights violations and brutal violence” against civilians.
In a sign of growing division from the Moscow Patriarchate, the head of Ukraine’s Moscow-linked Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Onufriy Berezovsky, instructed all parishes to pray on Sunday for God’s mercy amid the “cries and groans of the Ukrainian people” and in “making the authorities wise and strengthening our army with courage”.
Metropolitan Onufriy’s bishops offered monasteries, convents and church basements for sheltering civilians, as a spokesman for Ukraine’s independent Orthodox church, Archbishop Eustratius Zorya, accused Patriarch Kirill of Moscow of “refined hypocrisy”, after he told a liturgy in the Russian capital’s Christ the Saviour cathedral he was praying for “peace in the Russian land” which “includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia”.
“May the Lord preserve our church in unity, and protect from fratricidal battle the peoples comprising the one space of the Russian Orthodox church,” Kirill added, in an address carried by Russia’s Interfax news agency.
“God forbid the present political situation in fraternal Ukraine, so close to us, should be aimed at making the evil forces that have always strived against the Russian church gain the upper hand.”
Reacting to the patriarch’s latest appeal, Metropolitan Epifanij, who also offered help this week in returning Russian corpses, told Kirill on Monday it was “clear from your previous public statements that maintaining the commitment of Putin and the Russian leadership is much more important to you than caring for people in Ukraine, some of whom considered you their shepherd before the war”.
A priest from the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Fr Maksym Kozachyn, who led the Nativity parish at Ivankiv near Kyiv, was shot dead in his car by Russian troops at the weekend, according to media reports, while another, Fr Vasily Vyrozub, from Holy Trinity parish in Odessa, was seized when he arrived on a Black Sea island to retrieve the remains of Ukrainian soldiers killed in a firefight last week.
The Orthodox Church issued instructions on Facebook on Monday for laypeople wishing to baptise children “in extreme conditions”, after reports of births in undergound city bunkers, while Ukraine’s parliament, or Verkhovna Rada, authorised the use of church bells for air raid warnings.
The Vatican’s Nuncio in Kiev, Lithuanian Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, told Vatican Radio he and other staffers were “ready to hide in the basement” of their Kyiv nunciature, adding that he was particularly fearful for the safety of hospital patients and tower-block residents, and concerned about diminishing food supplies for the capital’s three million inhabitants.
Meanwhile, in his message on Sunday, Archbishop Shevchuk thanked Catholic bishops abroad for many “letters of support and solidarity with Ukraine”, and said he was grateful to the Pope, who telephoned him at the weekend, for helping ensure “the whole world community is beginning to mobilise”.
“Whoever you are, heads of states and parliament, politicians, military, church leaders, do your part, and say words in support of Ukraine,” the Greek Catholic archbishop added. “Just as morning follows night, and resurrection follows death, so we believe that after this terrible war will come the victory of Ukraine, as this new day comes relentlessly and systematically closer”.
Ukraine’s embattled president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Patriarch Bartholomew by telephone on Monday that Ukrainians were “hoping for peace soon”, while drawing “spiritual support and strength” from his prayers.
After separate conversations with the Pope and Ukraine’s Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish leaders, he urged all faiths “pray for our defenders, for the souls of our heroes who gave their lives for Ukraine and for our unity and our victory”.
The Kremlin said one of the reasons for the Russian invasion was the “denazification” of the country. According to the Jerusalem Post Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, spoke by phone on Saturday to one of Ukraine’s chief rabbis, Yaakov Bleich, and requested that every Jew in Ukraine pray for the safety of each person in Ukraine. Said Ismagilov, Mufti of the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of Ukraine, appealed to all Ukrainians to stand united in defence of Ukraine.
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